Need for New Ways to Grow Food
By Dr Arvind Kumar
According to a recent report released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and reported by IRIN News agency, in coming four decades many parts of the world will have run out of water for farming and people will probably need to have enough money to buy food. The report that is said to be the first-ever authoritative analysis of the state of the world’s land and water resources, looks at land and water from a food security perspective. Considering 75 percent of the population in developing countries is poor, lives in rural areas and depends on agriculture for income and food, the report states that it is now estimated that more than 40 percent of the world’s rural population lives in river basins that are physically water scarce.
To feed a burgeoning global population, estimated to hit nine billion by 2050, we will have to produce another one billion tonnes of cereals and 200 million extra tonnes of livestock products every year. A growing population will also put a squeeze on the per capita amount of land available in developing countries, which is expected to halve (to 0.12 hectare) by 2050. Various trade-offs will be required to help countries feed themselves: intensification of agriculture rather than expansion, and irrigation systems rather than depending on rainfall. More than four-fifths of production gains will have to occur largely on existing agricultural land, but all will involve policy decisions that need to be grounded in an agricultural approach that is not only friendly to land and water resources, but also to the ecosystem at large.
