ROME, 23 September 2009: Producing 70 percent more food for an additional 2,3 billion people by 2050 while at the same time combating poverty and hunger, using scarce natural resources more efficiently and adapting to climate change are the main challenges world agriculture will face in the coming decades, according to an FAO discussion paper published Wednesday.
The UN agency will organize a High-Level Expert Forum in Rome on 12-13 October 2009 to discuss strategies on “How to Feed the World in 2050”. The Forum will bring together around 300 leading experts from academic, nongovernmental and private sector institutions from developing and developed countries.
The Forum will prepare the ground for the World Summit on Food Security, to take place in Rome 16-18 November 2009.
Cautious Optimism
– FAO is cautiously optimistic about the world’s potential to feed itself by 2050, said FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem. However, he pointed out that feeding everyone in the world by then will not be automatic and several significant challenges have to be met.
Ghanem said there was a need for a proper socioeconomic framework to address imbalances and inequalities and ensure that everyone in the world has access to the food they need and that food production is carried out in a way that reduces poverty and take account of natural resource constraints.
Global projections show that in addition to projected investments in agriculture, further significant investment will be needed to enhance access to food, otherwise some 370 million people could still be hungry in 2050, almost 5 per cent of the global population.
According to the latest UN projections, world population will rise from 6,8 billion today to 9,1 billion in 2050 – a third more mouths to feed than there are today.
Nearly all of the population growth will occur in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa’s population is expected to grow the fastest (up 108 per cent, 910 million people), and East and South East Asia’s the slowest (up 11 per cent, 228 million).
Around 70 per cent of the world population will live in cities or urban areas by 2050, up from 49 per cent today.
Food demand
The demand for food is expected to continue to grow as a result both of population growth and rising incomes. Demand for cereals (for food and animal feed) is projected to reach some 3 billion tonnes by 2050. Annual cereal production will have to grow by almost a billion tonnes (2,1 billion tonnes today), and meat production by over 200 million tonnes to reach a total of 470 million tonnes in 2050, 72 per cent of which will be consumed in developing countries, up from the 58 per cent today.
The production of biofuels could also increase the demand for agricultural commodities, depending on energy prices and government policies.
Kilde:www.fao.org
