In 2020, the world produced more than enough calories to feed the global population, but only half of those calories reached people’s plates due to rising meat and biofuel production
By Michael Le Page
25 August 2025
One reason fewer calories are reaching people’s plates is the use of palm oil for biodiesel
Augustine Bin Jumat/Shutterstock
The world produced enough calories in 2020 to feed 15 billion people – but only 50 per cent of those calories ended up reaching people’s plates. This proportion is now very likely to have fallen even lower because of the declining efficiency of the global food system.
Rising production of meat – especially beef – and biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are the main reasons for this increasing inefficiency, according to Paul West at the University of Minnesota and his colleagues. Shifting to healthier diets and reducing biofuel production could increase food availability without requiring more farmland.
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Food production is typically measured in terms of mass, but looking at it in terms of calories – the amount of energy in the food – is more informative when it comes to comparing different crops and assessing how much people need.
To do this, West’s team started with data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization on the top 50 crops in terms of calories. These 50 crops together provide 97.5 per cent of all the calories grown around the world. They include staples such as maize and potatoes, oil crops like sunflower and rapeseed, cacao and some fruits and vegetables, including bananas and tomatoes.
Next, the team used data on how efficiently animals convert feed into meat, milk or eggs to work out how many calories are lost during the production of animal-based foods. To eliminate short-term trends, the team’s figures for 2010 and 2020 are the average over three years.