Jeanne Bernick, Farm Journal Crops & Issues Editor
The culmination of a booming world population and shortage of land and resources for food production is a “ticking time bomb”, says Gebisa Ejeta, a distinguished professor of agronomy at Purdue University and 2009 World Food Prize recipient. The World Food Prize is considered the Nobel Prize of agriculture.
“In just the next four to five decades, we need to double food production on the same amount of land,” Ejeta says. “It’s taken us since the beginning of civilization just to reach the level of food production we are at today. This is an urgent situation.”
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that any added farmland would help produce only 20% of the additional food on our planet will need in 2050, and 10% would come from increased cropping intensity.
That means 70% of the world’s additional food needs can be produced only with new and existing agricultural technologies, according to the FAO. Last year’s economic recession and food price crisis also showed the world it is not as awash in food as experts once thought.
Gains in food and feed productivity from now on must be achieved through better, higher efficiencies in crop production, adds Ejeta. But the concern today is that agricultural research has declined globally over the past two decades.
“Agricultural science has become a victim of its own success,” Ejeta says. Farming became a profitable undertaking and agricultural research dramatically transformed production practices and drew investment from private industry, and increased crop yields, he says
“An unfortunate result is that society has taken agriculture for granted,” Ejeta says. “Declines in public funding for agriculture research, both here and abroad, has led to fewer scientific interventions to advance agriculture.”
The good news, Ejeta says, is that in 2009 world leaders have reawakened to food shortage concerns. “There is a new call for an end to complacency and a revitalization of agricultural research that is focused on alleviating hunger,” he says.
Ejeta will receive the $250,000 World Food Prize on Thursday, Oct. 15, for his research leading to the increased production and availability of sorghum in his native Africa. For more information, visit www.worldfoodprize.org.
You can email Jeanne Bernick at jbernick@farmjournal.com.
