For healthy potatoes - Bayer CropScience
For healthy potatoes - Bayer CropScience For healthy potatoes - Bayer CropScience
Outlook into the Global agricultural challenges and technology developments In many countries agriculture remains the engine for the national economy. With 70% of the population in emerging economies depending on agriculture for their livelihood and with 1.2 billion people living in rural areas and on less than one dollar a day, raising farm productivity is also inextricably linked to poverty alleviation and peace. 24 COURIER 2/06
future Globally farming faces giant challenges: old challenges remain, namely how to increase food and fibre production in response to the inexorable rise in population. At the same time population and income growth, coupled with dietary diversification, are changing food consumption patterns and add to the overall burden placed on natural resources such as land, water, energy and biodiversity. The need for rural development, including getting the knowledge and means of applying locally appropriate technologies across to millions of small scale growers in emerging economies, also continues. Often this is hampered by market entry hurdles at local level or barriers to market access at international level. But this is not all: newer challenges such as climate change will have a direct effect on agriculture and the consequent pressure to switch to cleaner energy sources, such as biofuels, raises the question of whether land and other resources can be spared for this purpose. Over the past 100 years world population has more than trebled to over 6 billion and forecasts predict an increase to almost 8 billion by 2025. Over the past half century food production has more than kept pace with human numbers, but the annual increase in farm productivity is predicted to slow from an average 2.2 percent over the past three decades to 1.5% in the period until 2030. This is still ahead of expected population growth, but alongside growing human numbers, changes in lifestyle and dietary habits fostered by economic development is boosting the demand for high value food products. Large increases in meat, fruit and vegetable consumption are projected, and yet animal proteins, kilogram for kilogram, require almost three times as much in terms of natural resources to produce as traditional starchy foods. Shortages of natural resources such as water, soil, energy and biodiversity add to the overall challenge. The bottom line is that approximately 90% of the required increase of agricultural production must come from yield increases on existing farmland, which at the same time is also the best way to protect biodiversity. However a recent IFPRI study (2002) concluded that soil degradation due to erosion, nutrient depletion and salinisation affects 70% of the world’s cropland, and is severe on 30-40%. Fresh water demand is estimated to have risen more than six-fold from 1900 to 1995 while population growth “only” doubled during the same period. Water use in agriculture accounts for some 70% of all water use worldwide and thus water shortages have been identified as likely to be the single most significant constraint on crop production over the next 50 years. If current use trends continue agriculture will require double water use by 2050. Almost 12% of the earth’s land surface is covered by protected areas, which exceeds the global target of 10% set in 1992. Nonetheless, ecosystems continue to be degraded. Since space is limited strategies to conserve biodiversity can not just be confined to protected areas. Conservation objectives must be firmly embedded into agricultural practices. What makes the productivity issue even more critical are aspects such as climate change. Forecasted global temperature increases of between 1.4 and 5.8°C by the end of this century will impact on farming, e.g. as wheather extremes will regularly occur. Emerging economies with a high dependence on agriculture will be particularly affected according to a recent study published jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). These countries could experience an 11% decrease in cultivable, rainfed land with consequent decline in cereal production. In contrast North America, Northern Europe, the Russian Federation and East Asia may see a significant potential to expand their crop area and increase production of cereals. Climate change will also influence the development and intensification of plant pests (insects, pathogens and weeds) caused by changing ecological conditions, which will have to be addressed at an accelerating pace, often not leaving much time to find effective and appropriate pest control solutions. Recent developments such as the sharp rise in oil prices, the need for cleaner alternative energy sources and the requirement to reduce carbon emissions under the Kyoto protocol have led to a boom for biofuels: bioethanol and biodiesel. Production is increasing rapidly in Europe, the Americas, Thailand, India, Australia and elsewhere based on crops as diverse as corn, soybeans, rapeseeds, sunflowers, coconuts and sugar cane. What makes biofuels so compelling is the fact that conventional car engines can run on them without any major change and thus they offer an advantage over hydrogen powered cars, which can only be used with a more complex technology. To date Brazil’s 20 million cars already run on 25 percent bioethanol. While the technology is straightforward the politics are more complex: would energy crops take too much space away from food crops badly needed to feed the growing population and would it also put biodiversity and other natural resources under even more pressure 2/06 COURIER 25
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Outlook into the<br />
Global agricultural challenges<br />
and technology developments<br />
In many countries agriculture remains the engine for the national<br />
economy. With 70% of the population in emerging economies<br />
depending on agriculture for their livelihood and with 1.2 billion people<br />
living in rural areas and on less than one dollar a day, raising farm<br />
productivity is also inextricably linked to poverty alleviation and peace.<br />
24 COURIER 2/06
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