If you ask me what’s the single biggest challenge, I’d say we simply have too many people. The place is too small for that many people and simply cannot support it. 25 years ago 2 billion people was already too many and soon we’ll be at 9 billion. And in 10 years from now? Can we still feed the world? Can we provide enough opportunities for so many? 

We are fast heading towards outstripping the ecological supply of food in the coming decades. 8 billion of the 9.billion people will be living in developing countries and things are not getting better there. Hungry people whether in North Korea or Africa or Mexico will create disasters of unparalleled magnitude because people will do anything to feed themselves.

In the early 90s, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency produced a sustainable diet. It looked at the implications of reducing the environmental impact of the farming and food production system, and produced a diet that, if implemented, would reduce energy consumption in food production by 30%, reduce artificial fertilizer use by between 20% and 40%, and reduce the acreage needed to produce food. Does it mean we will not be having steaks in 20 years? Or only once a month? May be technologies can solve the problems? Space farming? In 2050, your choices of steak will not be Kobe or Angus, it will be Mars or Venus.

We must first deal with managing population growth and this problem is mostly in developing counties. Any financial aids going to these countries must include conditions in managing population growth together with gender empowerment, education and economic security.

Then we can look at what technologies can help increase supply. Food production is not exactly efficient and agricultural protectionism is not helping. Free trade is good and will help reduce prices, it may put many small farmers out of business. It needs to address this problem. The long distant transportation of food supply does not make sense. We need to think local.

China is doing a superb job feeding a billion 1.3 billion people and it is not an easy task. They are doing a very smart job of developing manufacturing industries and yet not forgetting agriculture development. China is a net food exporter, and its food exports, as well as its imports, are growing. It’s capacity to continue food export growth is constrained by intense competition for limited resources by non-agricultural industry and other sectors of the economy. Industrial and urban growth is increasing the competition for China’s limited land and water. China’s non-farm economic boom means that housing complexes, industrial parks, power stations, and other projects, are being built on land converted from agriculture. 

Competition for land within agriculture will intensify. Increasing production of meat, dairy products, vegetables, fruit, and farm-raised fish competes with grain cultivation for area. Given the continuous shrinkage of the agricultural land base, expansion of one agricultural activity generally means that land must be diverted from another. Chinese scientists are working on developing new crop varieties and production systems that could increase yields and use water more efficiently. China understands the importance of agriculture independence.