Can we feed nine billion people by 2050?

IUPAC Plenary Six and Seven, Wednesday 9:45am

Chris Leaver, University of Oxford

The world’s population has more than doubled in the past 50 years and the relative abundance of food has kept pace, with the poorest benefiting most. Yet one billion people are malnourished and live below the poverty line.

The dramatic increase in crop yields was due to several innovations: genetics and plant breeding, nitrogen fertilisers, agrichemicals, irrigation and mechanisation.

Oxford researcher Chris Leaver asks if we can repeat the achievement and feed a predicted world population of nine billion by 2050. We will need to double agricultural productivity on the same area of land with less available water.

He says we can, but only by using the best of modern biology, biochemistry and agrichemistry coupled with sensible regulatory regimes.

Abstract

Food Security: From Chemical to Biological Solutions?

Emeritus Professor C.J.Leaver (chris.leaver@plants.ox.ac.uk)

The world’s population has more than doubled in the last 50 years and the relative abundance of food has kept pace, with the poorest benefiting the most, yet one billion are malnourished and live below

the poverty line. This dramatic increase in crop yields was due to a number of innovations: genetics and plant breeding, nitrogen fertilisers, agrochemicals, irrigation and mechanisation.

The major challenge for the future is to feed a predicted world population of 9 billion by 2050, 80% of whom will live in developing countries with the majority living in an urban environment. If we are to conserve biodiversity and ecological resources and minimise the affects of biotic and abiotic stress this increase in yield can only be accomplished by doubling agricultural productivity on the same area of land with less available water.

During the last 25 years the skills of the plant breeders have been enhanced by our increasingly detailed understanding of the information content of plant genomes and how cells and organisms function at the molecular, biochemical and physiological level coupled with our ability to modify plant traits by both marker assisted plant breeding and genetic modification. Integration of all these so called ‘ –omics technologies’ using bioinformatics and modelling coupled with the appropriate use of agrochemical is the only way in which the global challenges outlined above can be addressed and sustainable crop productivity achieved.

The application of these technologies together with sensible regulatory regimes must not only be applied to improving food production in major crops but also adapted to improving orphan crops, food security and alleviating poverty in the developing world in general.