A major Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) says the key to food security is to farm smarter, not to plow more land.
The strains on agriculture are growing as the global population rises and emerging economies demand more types of food.
Frank Rijsberman, CEO of CGIAR noted,“Agriculture had been neglected for several decades. We had become used to abundant and cheap food. The world got a wake-up call in 2008, ’10, ’11 with spikes in food prices. People realised that we have to produce an awful lot more food for a growing world population, as much as 70% by 2050,”
The world population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, an increase of 2 billion from the current level. However, to feed that many people, is it simply a matter of planting more seeds on more land?
Rijsberman explained; “No, actually, that’s the wrong way to go. Crop yields – the amount of crop that we get per hectare has plateaued. It is no longer increasing. The only thing farmers can do is indeed plow under more land and they are doing that at an alarming pace.
They are doing that now more rapidly than during the green revolution. But if they do that they’re going to plow under marginal lands, key environmental areas. That would be quite disastrous and not a long-term sustainable path,” he said.
He said the key is research to learn how to get greater crop output from existing agricultural land. That’s one of the main goals of CGIAR.
“There’s a lot of private sector research in agriculture, but that serves primarily the big commercial farmers. We are serving the smallholder farmers – the 500 million farmers on less than two hectares – that provide most of the food in developing countries,” he said.
A second goal is to get the latest research into the hands of smallholder farmers as quickly as possible. Information such as ways to better access markets and reduce post-harvest loses.
Another is to address the issues of climate change, nutrition and gender, since women account for much if not most of the agricultural production around the world.
Rijsberman said while recent spikes in food prices may not hit consumers very hard in developed countries, they can have a devastating effect in poor countries.
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