Feeding The Earth In 2050

In order to provide the future nine-billion people that are expected to be on Earth in 2050 with food without creating an unsustainable burden on the environment, there will have to be a huge change in eating and agricultural practices, French researchers announced on Wednesday.

Two institutions joined up to determine what could possibly occur over the course of the next forty years as the world’s population soars to around 2.5 billion.

They based the statistics for the study on food production between 1961 and 2003, a time that saw the "green revolution" of rice production that especially benefited Third World countries.

The team set forth one scenario that analyzed historical trends in food output and use of land in an open-market manner.

They found that under this projection, intensive farming would cause production to increase by 2050.

This would also cause the production of meat to speed up and the chasm between the nutritionally rich and nutritionally poor to widen. And it can only be expected that environmental issues would be ignored until they became urgent, as is seen today.

Another possible scenario projects low-intensity, sustainable farming with meat or fish accounting for about 500 calories in an average daily intake of 3,000 per person, or around 15 percent of the diet compared with 17 percent in 2003.

Large inputs are necessary for meat farming, and every calorie of meat produced by a cow or sheep requires seven calories of grass and other vegetation. With chickens and pigs, the ratio is one to four.

In order to meet the goal of 3,000 calories per person, there would have to be about a 25 percent reduction in daily intake among wealthy nations today and a corresponding increase in sub-Saharan Africa.

The researchers listed two primary factors that would aid the effort to feed the billions.

One thing that would help is to cut down on waste. As it is, over one-third of the food produced everyday is lost in the fields, in processing plants and distribution.

Another is the growing population of the elderly. By 2050, the investigators see that "the average age of the world’s population will have increased by 10 years”.

“As populations get older, the caloric needs fall," Marion Guillou, president of the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), said.

The report, co-written with the Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), cautioned that achieving the second scenario would require market regulation and protection for the growing of staple foods in poor countries.