ABSTRACT
Humans have long held concerns about the sustainability of the earth’s capacity to produce enough food. But, on the whole, the dire forecasts of our inability to keep pace with basic calorie needs, going back to Malthus and continuing to the present, have been consistently wrong. They have been wrong because of human creativity directed toward more productive agriculture – a combination of expanding land under production and increasing yields on existing lands. But demographic projections clearly show the urgent need to accelerate these improvements, especially in developing countries. To 2050, global population is projected to increase at 0.7% per year, which in itself seems a significant challenge. But this is not globally uniform. Africa will continue with the highest rate of increase – West and East Africa at 2.21 and 2.15 %, respectively, with some countries, for example Tanzania, reaching nearly 3% per year growth (Fig. 1).
