As the world's population rises closer to seven billion, the demand and price for food products continues to increase.
A leading food security expert warns that a catastrophic global food crisis is inevitable, unless there's wide scale cooperation among nations. Dr. Robert Thompson, Professor Emeritus from the University of Illinois and Urbana-Champaign, spoke this week at the University of Saskatchewan.
As an agricultural economist, Thompson has extensive experience consulting on agricultural policy. He warns that food security issues in many countries will almost certainly deepen. He says by the year 2050, it's projected the world will have an additional 2.6 billion people to feed.
"To put that in perspective the population of China is 1.3 billion," said Thompson. "That's two more Chinas to be fed by the middle of the century. That's the magnitude of the challenge confronting the world's farmers."
Dr. Thompson says Africa and Southeast Asia are expected to see the biggest jump in population. He predicts world demand for food will double through the first half of the 21st century. But he estimates that only another 12 per cent of the earth's landmass can be realistically put into agricultural production.
"The only environmentally sustainable alternative is to do something close to at least to doubling the average productivity of the fertile, non-erodible soils already in production. Because the environmental cost of expanding the land area much beyond that 12 per cent are really unacceptable."
Availability and accessibility to water will also play a big part in the success or failure to increase farm production. Dr. Thompson says there's an urgent need to make better use of water resources, including that directed to irrigation.
"We may be talking tripling the average productivity of the water that's used in agriculture. Get three times as much crop per drop, because inevitably farmers will have less water available with which to produce twice as much output."
Dr. Thompson says adoption of sustainable farming practices and new technology will help the world meet the challenge of feeding it's ever-growing population.
