For healthy potatoes - Bayer CropScience

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
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