ABSTRACT
The challenge of feeding humanity is increasing due to population growth (currently 7.3 billion and predicted to be 10 billion in 2050; United Nations, 2015) and the requirement for more provisions (food supplies will need to increase by 60% globally, and 100% in developing countries over 2005 levels to feed the projected human population in 2050, according to FAO, 2011). The requirement for more food must at the same time be balanced against the need to maintain and manage our ‘natural’ resources when current agricultural production itself is often identied as having negative impacts on the environment (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). Moreover, a further challenge to increased agricultural production is climate change; according to predictions made by the IPCC (Porter et al., 2014), many regions of the globe will be increasingly vulnerable to crop and livestock failures. In Africa particularly, by 2020 crop yields from rainfed agriculture are expected to reduce by up to 50% (IPCC, 2014) and livestock production will face a higher prevalence of diseases and parasites and more and longer droughts (Wurzinger et al., 2014).
