Posts Tagged ‘Agriculture’

What food crisis?

July 16, 2013

In 1961 the world population was just over 3 billion. Now it is 7 billion. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s 2013 Statistical Year Book is now out and shows that during this period:

Agricultural production has increased  

  • Global crop production has expanded threefold over the past 50 years, largely through higher yields per unit of land and crop intensification.
  • Global per capita food supply rose from about 2 200 kcal/day in the early 1960s to over 2 800 kcal/day by 2009
  • Buoyed by high commodity prices, agriculture has demonstrated astonishing resilience during global economic turmoil. In 2010, agricultural value-added at the world level rose by 4 percent, in contrast to a 1 percent increase in overall GDP.

image UNEP/GEAS

So while population has increased by a factor of 2.3, the food available per person has increased by about 30%. Of course there are many millions who still suffer from malnutrition but this is primarily due to poverty and a failing of distribution systems. It is not the availability of food which has failed. The proportion of the population which is under-nourished continues to steadily decline.

(more…)

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Food production can double and solutions are available for feeding the planet

October 14, 2011

A new study shows that alarmist, Malthusian, doomsday scenarios regarding feeding the world’s population which may reach 9 billion in 2050 are not justified.

A team of researchers from Canada, the U.S., Sweden and Germany has concluded from modelling results that it is feasible to double the world’s food production while reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature.

Solutions for a cultivated planet, by Jonathan A. Foley, Navin Ramankutty, Kate A. Brauman, Emily S. Cassidy, James S. Gerber, Matt Johnston, Nathaniel D. Mueller, Christine O’Connell, Deepak K. Ray, Paul C. West, Christian Balzer, Elena M. Bennett, Stephen R. Carpenter, Jason Hill, Chad Monfreda, Stephen Polasky, Johan Rockström, John Sheehan, Stefan Siebert, David Tilman, David P. M. Zaks. . Nature, 2011; DOI: 10.1038/nature10452

Science Daily:

By combining information gathered from crop records and satellite images from around the world, they have been able to create new models of agricultural systems and their environmental impacts that are truly global in scope. ….

The researchers recommend:

  1. Halting farmland expansion and land clearing for agricultural purposes, particularly in the tropical rainforest. This can be achieved using incentives such as payment for ecosystem services, certification and ecotourism. This change will yield huge environmental benefits without dramatically cutting into agricultural production or economic well-being.
  2. Improving agricultural yields. Many farming regions in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe are not living up to their potential for producing crops — something known as “yield gaps.” Improved use of existing crop varieties, better management and improved genetics could increase current food production nearly by 60 per cent.
  3. Supplementing the land more strategically. Current use of water, nutrients and agricultural chemicals suffers from what the research team calls “Goldilocks’ Problem”: too much in some places, too little in others, rarely just right. Strategic reallocation could substantially boost the benefit we get from precious inputs.
  4. Shifting diets. Growing animal feed or biofuels on prime croplands, no matter how efficiently, is a drain on human food supply. Dedicating croplands to direct human food production could boost calories produced per person by nearly 50 per cent. Even shifting nonfood uses such as animal feed or biofuel production away from prime cropland could make a big difference.
  5. Reducing waste. One-third of the food produced by farms ends up discarded, spoiled or eaten by pests. Eliminating waste in the path that food takes from farm to mouth could boost food available for consumption another 50 per cent.

The study also outlines approaches to the problem that would help policy-makers reach informed decisions about the agricultural choices facing them. “For the first time, we have shown that it is possible to both feed a hungry world and protect a threatened planet,” said lead author Jonathan Foley, head of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment. “It will take serious work. But we can do it.”

Related:

Malthusian doomsday postponed – indefinitely 

7 billion people from October 31st by UN decree – but it is an opportunity not a problem

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Posted in Agriculture, Alarmism, Demographics, Development, Food | 1 Comment »

No food crisis in sight: World can feed its 9 billion in 2050

January 13, 2011
Smaller cropped version, made for Template:Agr...

Image via Wikipedia

Doomsday proponents will not like this new on-line publication in Nature and are already beginning to object. But I see no resource or food crunch that cannot be addressed by human ingenuity and the development of technology.

Paillard, S., Treyer, S. & Dorin, B. Agrimonde: Scenarios and Challenges for Feeding the World in 2050 (Editions Quae, 2011) doi:10.1038/news.2011.14

From Nature News:

Future of food could be bright: French agencies’ study punctures assumptions about the state of global agriculture.

The world will be able to feed the predicted 2050 population of nine billion people, according to two French agricultural research organizations. In a joint report published today, they lay out findings gleaned from 2006 to 2008 that could overturn some current assumptions about the state of global farming.

The report, titledAgrimonde, is published by the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) and the Centre for International Cooperation in Agronomic Research for Development (CIRAD), both headquartered in Paris. It contains some surprise findings on Africa and other regions — the latest results from an ongoing study by the two research agencies.

Agricultural productivity in Africa doubled between 1961 and 2003 — a finding that overturns most assumptions “and is one of the most surprising results of our work”, Patrick Caron, CIRAD’s director-general for research and strategy, told reporters last night.

African productivity remains the lowest in the world, however, averaging 10,000 kilocalories per hectare (kcal ha–1) compared with 20,000 kcal ha–1 globally and 25,000 kcal ha–1 in Asia. Productivity elsewhere doubled or tripled over the same period.

Asia scored higher on productivity than in other studies, because the agencies looked at aggregate rather than independent annual yields of wheat, rice and other crops, explains Bruno Dorin, an economist at CIRAD and one of the report’s authors. “In Asia, the wheat yield may be lower, but if you take account of rice and other crops grown in the same year, the total yield is higher,” he says.

Another finding to emerge is that major reserves of potential farmland exist across the globe, especially in Africa and Latin America, Dorin says. “The 1.5 billion hectares of land now cultivated could be increased to 4 billion, but this would of course be at the expense of pastures and forests, which are a reservoir of biodiversity and carbon,” he adds.

Read the original article:

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110112/full/news.2011.14.html


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Confirmed: Crops respond positively to increased carbon dioxide

September 19, 2010

Crops responded positively to future levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), but soil tillage practices had little effect on this response, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) study.

http://www.physorg.com/news203852397.html

Higher carbon dioxide levels used on crops, examined

Raised carbon dioxide improves crop yields

The first long-term study comparing tillage practices under high CO2 levels showed that elevated CO2 caused soybean and sorghum plants to increase photosynthesis while reducing transpiration-the amount of water the plants release. This resulted in increased water use efficiency, whether the  were grown with no-till or conventional tillage, according to researchers with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

Plant physiologist Steve Prior, plant pathologist Brett Runion, and their colleagues at the ARS National Soil Dynamics Laboratory in Auburn, Ala., found that water use efficiency response to high CO2 was much greater for soybeans than for sorghum over the 6-year study. The scientists also compared current ambient CO2 levels—about 370 parts per million (ppm)—with levels of 720 ppm. With the higher level of CO2, regardless of tillage method, soybean photosynthesis increased by about 50 percent, while sorghum photosynthesis rose by only 15 percent. This was expected because crops like soybean, which have a C3 photosynthetic pathway, are known to respond better to high CO2 levels than crops like sorghum and corn that have a C4 photosynthetic pathway. Most plants worldwide are C3 plants.

Photosynthesis - CO2 concentration graph

Carbon dioxide concentration and Photosynthesis

Although no-till didn’t make a difference as far as crops responding to high CO2, it can greatly reduce soil erosion, conserve  , and increase carbon storage, among its many benefits.

The results of this research were published earlier this year in the Journal of Environmental Quality.

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Indian monsoon has been “good”: 10%+ growth possible

September 12, 2010

The Indian monsoon season officially lasts from June to September. When average rainfall over these 4 months is close to or slightly above the long term average ( from about -5% to about +10%), the monsoon can be termed to be “good”.

With 3 weeks to go rainfall is running at 1% above the long term average and has been reasonably uniform over the whole country.

http://www.imd.gov.in/section/nhac/dynamic/Monsoon_frame.htm

Despite a steady decline in the share of agriculture and allied activities in GDP to about 14.6 percent, it continues to be the mainstay of majority of the population, of about 52 percent of the work force, and remains critical from the point of view of achieving the objectives of food security and price stability.

In 2009-10, there was a poor monsoon with rainfall being about 22% less than the long term average. Consequently the Agricultural growth rate was less than 2% (1.86%). The total GDP growth was held back to around 6%. The difference between a good monsoon year and a poor year is thought to be around 2% points for GDP:

For this year the pre-monsoon forecast was for 98% rainfall but with the La Niña conditions now prevailing, this has increased. Currently Agricultural growth (April – June  2010) is at 2.78% and the “good” monsoon is likely to see this increase sharply through the rest of the year.

Currently GDP is running at over 9% with industry and manufacturing each showing growth rates of close to 12%.

Inflation in food prices should now reduce sharply and if industry and manufacturing maintain their spurt, a total 10%+  GDP growth for 2010 -11 becomes probable.

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Posted in Business, Economy, India | 2 Comments »

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