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Feeding the world

By Max Rheese - posted Friday, 20 June 2008


As an example there is 24 million hectares of cropland in the old Soviet Union laying idle due to political unrest and uncertainty. In Mozambique there is 36 million hectares of arable land available but only 3.9 million hectares is in use.

The UN expects arable land to increase by 13 per cent to 2030. Clearly, increases in land available for food production cannot just keep rising and still allow agriculture to conform to the concept of sustainability, however, it does appear that there will be sufficient arable land available until 2050 to feed the projected population of 9.3 billion - all other factors being equal.

Increased frequency of crop rotation together with higher yielding crop varieties, such as genetically modified (GM) crops will account for the majority of yield increases over the next few decades.

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The upside to improved and modified varieties is the ability to cater for drought and frost tolerance, salinity and other traditional growing constraints, which in some localities will mean an increased range of arable land. The downside to increased cropping frequencies is the possibility of some cropping land being degraded without the adoption of improved farming techniques. Increased uptake of GM crops has seen a reduction in chemical usage of more than 10 per cent in some countries, to as high as 80 per cent reduction in others.

GM technology has the demonstrated ability to revolutionise the impact of agriculture on the environment. Each year more land is sown to GM crops as the production and environmental advantages become more obvious.

Not only has pesticide and herbicide use dropped dramatically with GM improved crops and changed farming practices, but many crops now are sown using low or no-till techniques, further improving soil retention as well as reducing use of diesel. Electronic soil moisture monitoring and computer aided irrigation are reducing water usage while crop yields per megalitre used continue to rise. Technology will continue to reduce food costs by increasing production per hectare.

One of the key factors in the sustainability of agriculture feeding the world is the decreasing rate of population growth in the last four decades. Many people overlook the fact that the rate of growth has consistently trended downwards from more than 2 per cent per annum in the 1960s to the projected rate of increase at 2050 of just 0.6 per cent per annum.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) believes this falling rate of population growth has lowered demand for food, which has influenced production to some degree. Global demand for cereals has declined from a growth rate of 2.5 per cent per annum in the 1970s to 1 per cent in the 1990s. Projecting ahead, the FAO estimate that total food consumption will grow at only a quarter of the rate of recent decades.

Key performance indicators for sustainably feeding the world are:

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  • continued falling rate of population growth;
  • increasing the land available for agriculture, as projected, by around 15 per cent up to 2050;
  • increased yields through technological and agricultural advances;
  • reduced environmental impact through improved agricultural practices;
  • higher priority for local food production, which can also help reduce poverty; and
  • political and economic stability in developing countries.

Despite media headlines portraying imminent food shortages, agriculture can continue to feed the world on a sustainable basis, at least until 2050, using the knowledge that we now have. Obviously, there are many obstacles to achieving this, not the least of which is global co-operation to achieve a more equitable distribution of food and resources.

Improving the ability for crop production on a local or regional level by involving the local population, could be the single biggest step forward in improving food security for a substantial part of the world population. This for the most part is a political problem, not a farming problem.

There is a solid foundation for entertaining an optimistic outlook that the world can sustainably feed itself into the foreseeable future. The current population is the healthiest, best fed and with a longer life span than ever before in the history of the world. We have a more varied diet, less contact with disease and a greater degree of personal safety than ever before; all with the highest human population the world has ever known.

The challenge is to share these advantages, the technology that creates them and the governance that allows it - more equitably.

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About the Author

Max Rheese is the Executive Director of the Australian Environment Foundation.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Max Rheese

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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