Agriculture in the 21st century faces multiple challenges: it has to produce more food and fibre to feed a growing population with a smaller rural labour force, more feedstocks for a potentially huge bioenergy market, contribute to overall development in the many agriculture-dependent developing countries, adopt more efficient and sustainable production methods and adapt to climate change.
World population is expected to grow by over a third, or 2.3 billion people, between 2009 and 2050 to reach 9bn people. Nearly all of this growth is forecast to take place in the developing countries. Market demand for food will continue to grow. Demand for cereals, for both food and animal feed uses is projected to reach some 3 billion tonnes by 2050, up from today’s nearly 2.1 billion tonnes. However this is lower than the 3.2 billion increase that materialized between 1970 and 2010. This deceleration will impact world agriculture by lowering its rate of growth compared to the past.
The projections show that feeding a world population of 9 billion people in 2050 would require raising overall food production by some 70 percent between 2005/07 and 2050. Production in the developing countries would need to almost double.
Ninety percent of the growth in crop production globally (80 percent in developing countries) is expected to come from higher yields and increased cropping intensity, with the remainder coming from land expansion.
Figure 1.1 Per capita food consumption
Achieving such production increases will not be easier than in the past; rather, the contrary often holds for a number of reasons. Land and water resources are now much more stressed than in the past and are becoming scarcer, both in quantitative terms (per capita) and qualitative ones, following soil degradation, salinization of irrigated areas and competition from uses other than for food production.
Growth