ABSTRACT
Improvements in irrigation techniques, sustainable farming methodologies, and drought and pest resistance have made a tremendous impact on global agricultural production. During the last three decades, production of food crops, such as grain and cereal, doubled and tripled resulting in a 19% per capita increase in food for direct human consumption.[1-3]
During the same time, the percentage of the world’s hungry and malnourished people dropped from 35% to 20%, and per capita food supplies rose from 2135 cal per day to 2750 cal per day.[4] Despite these vast improvements, more than 800 million people globally are still undernourished, and one-third of all children-two of every five in South Asia-are malnourished.[5]
INCREASING NEEDS AND INCREASING EFFICIENCIES
In the next few decades, as world population increases to between 7 and 10 billion people, global demand for food is projected to grow twofold, with even greater increases in the developing world.[6] In the past, increases in food production were achieved by placing more land under cultivation. Since the mid-1960s, however, the rate of growth of the world’s cultivated lands grew at a declining rate, averaging only 8%. In many industrialized nations, agricultural area actually decreased due to competition with urban sprawl.[7] As a result, recent increases in production have been more a factor of higher efficiency and productivity rather than expansion of land under cultivation.
