ABSTRACT
One of the biggest single problems facing the world today is the growing imbalance between an expanding world population and a static, or only slowly expanding, world food supply. The problem is made more complex by the fact that the developed world produces about two thirds of the world’s total food supplies and has a fairly static population which is well fed, perhaps even overfed. In certain areas such as Europe and the US, agricultural land is taken out of food production as set aside, or land bank, in order to control the over-production of food. In contrast the developing world has a rapidly growing population, due to improved survival rates, especially in infancy, yet its food supplies are not growing at a proportionate rate. Much of the potential arable land is currently being taken out of production, or is deteriorating due to desertification and deforestation, or is being turned over to cash crops for sale to the industrialised world.
