Can the world feed itself sustainably?

The food crisis of 2007 and 2008 brought the global problem of hunger and malnutrition to an unprecedented level of concern. While the records of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations indicated that 963 million people suffered from hunger, the explosion of food prices gave way to a scenario that nobody had predicted. Rice prices quadrupled and corn prices tripled in very few months (FAO 2009), putting food importing countries under enormous strain to avoid passing those price surges on to the poorest and most needy. FAO’s revised records indicate that another 100 million people swelled the count of starving human beings resulting from the food crises.