How Will We Feed The World in 2050?

Published October 05, 2009 @ 06:39AM PT

How To Feed the World 2050 is a high-level expert forum held in Rome next week that will ask how on earth we will feed 9 billion people, as demand for food grows, and is forced to compete with biofuels for the arable land. Add a lot of climate change to the mix and increasing rates of urbanization meaning fewer people living in rural areas, and growing more food isn't going to be easy.

There are answers, like increasing yields rather than farming more land, but food production is going to have to increase by 70 percent if we want to avoid more of the world's populations drifting deeper in poverty and hunger. There is hope, suggests FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN) Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem: "FAO is cautiously optimistic about the world's potential to feed itself by 2050."

As if hunger alone wasn't enough, let's not forget the the paper (pdf) explaining how under-nutrition can be an "underlying cause of child-deaths associated with diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria, and measles." The How To Feed The World In 2050 forum is one of a number of events, including World Food Day on October 16th, that prepare the ground for the World Summit on Food Security, November 16-18.

Photo credit: Filipe Moreira

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The future of global farming and food supply ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug , This top Cereal Grains Breeder details the way the population will out pace the supply of food in 2050 , but some experts think it will be as soon as 2030 if catastrophic conditions such as drought and disease enter into the factors at hand . There is a threat coming from a new disease call Ug99 , its a grain stem rust thats so far beating the breed resistance teams trying to breed new varieties that can over come the disease . Pay attention to what he talks about in this writing , he talks about the reduction in breeding higher yielding grains , this is vital when you are dealing with a developed agriculture platform . We can create these kinds of alternatives to move alot thats grown in the fields to indoor facilities ; www.verticalfarm.com Unless we deal with this looming crisis , Health care seems pointless . What really is the Plan for health care , it only seems the transfer of Power over health care treatment is the Real Goal .

When I read this stuff it makes me wonder that maybe all they want is to control the Treatment of health care , not Cure Illnesses , when you learn about the issues with population controls that are being discussed and the fact that This problem will only get worse ...

While population growth is slowing down, we are still adding 77 million hungry mouths to the planet every year.

In 1950, the world had 2.5 billion inhabitants. In 1999, it passed 6 billion, and we're quickly working on 7 billion. Most of this population growth is in developing countries.

At the same time, the world's arable land — land that is used for farming — is shrinking. Right now, only 10 percent of the world's surface is arable land. Good land is lost to urbanization and other uses every day. As a result, the world is losing one hectare (about 2.5 acres) of arable land every 7.67 seconds , so you can see the reason Bilderberg is calling for world population controls .

Read these articles and then ask yourselves do they REALLY want to cure Illnesses or just get control over treatments and slow down treatments ? http://www.aim.org/aim-report/obama-czar-favors-planetary-regime/ http://zombietime.com/john_holdren_and_harrison_brown/ http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/ This shows you who is running the policies and planning events ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bilderberg_participants Read this article to understand the plan they have , it really makes no sense that cures for illness is the goal with health care reform ; http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece

Posted by Tony Newbill on 10/06/2009 @ 10:36AM PT
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I'm confident we can be creative enough to work this out. The overproduction of corn must stop. Eating less beef will also help. Just a thought, how much plantable space is tobacco taking? The world can definitely do something beneficial with that land. All of this will require those in developed countries to further consider sharing their resources with the developing countries (reversing greed is the part I'm not totally convinced will happen).

Posted by Ryan Lindsay on 10/06/2009 @ 11:11AM PT
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I am 110 % in agreement that Tobacco farming is a mis use of farmland with todays issues surrounding food shortages . It also is leading to higher costs associated with health care . I lost my Dad to bladder cancer due to smoking cigs and it was a very difficult year to watch him go the way he did , so farming tobacco in my mind is rediculous !!!!!!!!

Posted by Tony Newbill on 10/06/2009 @ 09:26PM PT
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I agree with Ryan Lindsay can empathize with Mr. Newbill, as my mother died at 46 from smoking cigarettes, which are estimated to kill more people thanalcohol and all the illegal drugs combined by a wide margin. Also, we have far too much arable land used for meat production and inefficient methods of producing biofuels.

Americans in particular, and many others in the developed world would be in better health if they either eliminated consuming animal flesh, or just used it as an ingredient, rather than the centerpiece of meals. As for biofuels: What Brazil does with the waste from sugar cane makes sense, whereas America's use of corn for this purpose uses more energy than it gets back, thus needs to be subsidized, which is a crime when there are so many people around the planet that would gladly eat the corn that American farmers feed to their livestock or use for biofuels.

Posted by Andrew Heugel on 10/10/2009 @ 09:14AM PT
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Andrew I am sorry for your loss too . Outlaw the Use of fertilizer on any thing thats Grown and does not increase FOOD supply would be a good start . It would lower fertilizer costs and food costs as a result , and save lives because they would not grow the Tobacco if the yield goes down .

as far as growing a renewable energy fuel why not this ........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel

Its has a Food creating immunity benefit too .....

http://www.optimumchoices.com/Chernobyl.htm

Posted by Tony Newbill on 10/10/2009 @ 09:49AM PT
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