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How to Feed the Planet

The Food and Agriculture Organization entitled its report " How to feed the World in 2050 ". The FAO considers that by 2050 the global population will be 9.1 billion people, about one third more than today and 70% of those will live in urban areas, compared to approximately 50% today. In order to feed this larger and wealthier population, food production should increase by 70%. It is estimated that US$ 83 billion per year in agricultural investments in the developing world will be required to achieve the necessary increases in food production. A majority of experts think that despite of key problems such as climate change which could deeply affect our resources, the world should produce enough food. However the real issue could be the access and usage of food. And no one can ignore that the current agricultural production methods -pesticides, chemical fertilizers- also represent a threat to the planet. Official figures point out that farmers today produce about 140% more food than they did just a few decades ago. But modern agriculture is also responsible for a third of greenhouse gases emissions throughout the world. Beside that, some authors denounced the practice of monocropping in many parts of the world. Yet, the planet's ecosystems need genetic diversity to tackle the coming climate change. To that must be added that nearly a third of the food production is wasted mainly due to a poor crop storage and to an ineffective food chain. And more and more resources are used to produce biofuels. These 2 factors help to explain why a billion people are still hungry. But finally, are we really sure that a population explosion will occur? Indeed some experts in the field already forecast a dramatic decline of the world's human population. This at least is a good prediction for guaranteeing human nutrition.

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