Robert D. Saik - Food 5.0: How We Feed the Future

When you woke up this morning, did you worry about a plague?

Did you worry about war?

Did you worry about famine?

Im guessing you didnt. I know I didnt; well not yet.

Were among the first generations to be blessed with such peace in our liveswhich is something we should be grateful for. Looking ahead at the next thirty years, however, between now and 2050, concerns me.

As I look to the future, Im not necessarily concerned about a plague, war, or famine, specifically; however, I am concerned about agricultures ability to feed the future. Not whether agriculture can feed the future, but rather will agriculture be ALLOWED to feed the future.

You see, agriculture is the glue of civilizations, for without food, you have anarchy, and I see great challenges facing the sector in the near future. Never in the history of mankind has agriculture faced a challenge like were going to face in the next thirty years: feeding our ever - growing population hopefully without the impact of war, plague, or famine.

Historically, war, plague, and famine have wiped out millions and millions of humans. However, in the last century, wars have diminished, plagues have lessened, and famine has been greatly reduced largely due to the adoption of science in agriculture.

People believe the global population will continue to rise forever, but according to UN demographers and sites like Gapminder.org, the population will level out at around eleven billion people, likely around the year 2100. Even more conservative demographers predict the population will grow to between nine and ten billion people by 2050, then level out.

The real challenge lies in feeding the population between now and 2050, while the population grows from seven billion to nine or ten billion people. Our pinch point occurs within the next thirty years.

How are we going to feed ten billion people? My belief is that agriculture can again (as in the days of Norman Borlaug wrong. I have worked in agriculture my entire life, and despite the great challenges I see in the future, I also see great opportunities.

A few years ago, in Argentina, I was interviewing a scientist who was working on isolating genetic traits that would increase drought tolerance in crops. When discussing the population rise to 2050, she said, We have three choices. We can kill people, which we have a pretty good track record of doing, we can implement mandatory population control, or we can feed people.

I doubt that killing people is a solution; although the First World War managed to do so to the tune of thirty - six million. I hope that plagues, like the Spanish Flu that wiped out fifty million people are things of the past.

Mandatory birth control, such as the one - child policy in China, is not that palatable to most people; and it really did not work that well.

So, the logical solution to sustain a population of nine to eleven billion is to figure out how to feed them. Its going to take all the tools in our toolbox, and we need to ensure that we do so in a sustainable fashion. In fact, so long as we have people on the planet, we must ensure that agriculture is infinitely sustainable .

Consider the numbers:

• To meet the global demand that we will encounter in the next thirty years, we must grow the equivalent of the amount of food weve grown in the past ten thousand years.