**7. Food security**

Because agriculture relies heavily on the presence of favorable environmental parameters, any uncertainty related to agricultural conditions places food security into a state of flux and thus creates a potential threat to food sustainability and security for humans [136, 137]. Threats to food security are vast, diverse, and have increased sharply during the past three decades. Issues affecting food security involve agricultural, industrial, and climate-related components (e.g., from natural disasters to heavy pollution) [138, 139]. Protein-based food products from animal derived sources may contain significant antibiotic residue because antibiotics are increasingly utilized to maintain product viability and longevity during transport and distribution [140, 141]. Downstream effects of using antimicrobials in animal feed include various patterns of antibiotic resistance seen in both animals and humans who ingest animal-based food products [121, 142, 143]. Consequently, we are increasingly seeing emerging antibiotic resistance patterns that render many of our available therapeutics ineffective, leading to excess mortality [144–146]. Moreover, antibiotics have also leaked into water and food chains, creating complex and challenging matrices for the detection of their source of origin, which is vital to effective disease control [147, 148]. The importance of this complex phenomenon, in addition to introducing excess risk into the food chain and endangering the overall food security, is the potential for synergistic interactions between CC, emerging novel pathogens, and often unpredictable patterns of antimicrobial resistance [149–151]. As such, the confluence of the above factors is projected to result in significant food shortages, on *per capita* basis, by the year 2050. The attributable mortality may exceed 500,000 deaths around the globe [152]. Increased focus on ensuring food availability will be a crucial component of IHS in the future, and will be inextricably tied with the ongoing CC [7, 14]. Among promising sustainable growth strategies in this important area is the introduction and increasing implementation of the vertical farm concept [153]. Last, but not least, the gradual acidification of the oceans is beginning to affect the overall aquaculture and food chain sustainability, especially across the densely populated coastal areas that heavily rely on fish and other forms of seafood for ongoing food security [154–156]. Associated phenomena include harmful algal blooms which further damage aquatic ecosystems [157].
