So far, world food supply has managed to stay ahead of rising population due to increasing productivity and a modest expansion of cultivated area. However, finite resource reserves, the increasing cost of energy and the increasing environmental cost of opening new land pose new challenges....

Humanity is facing its greatest challenge. To produce 70% more food by 2050 without destroying the environment means doing much more with less. Partly due to the abundant food and record-low food prices achieved by the Green Revolution, overseas development assistance for agriculture dropped...

Demand for livestock products in the past three decades has increased rapidly, especially in developing countries. This increase has resulted in, and will continue to cause, increased demand for livestock feed. This paper examines existing projections of global feed demand and supply with an...

Africa is short of food, due particularly to increasing population and under-investment in agriculture and agricultural research. For several reasons farm yields are about one-quarter of the global average. New broad cooperative approaches to the problem have had very encouraging results; Malawi...

Doubling food production by 2050 under conditions of climate change and depleted natural resources requires increased investment and creative approaches. The Water-Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project, a five-year public–private partnership begun in 2008 and led by the African...

Mechanisation of agriculture is fundamental to reducing poverty and improving lifestyle and food security in the developing world. Large populations are escaping subsistence agriculture, and there is a broad consensus that conservation agriculture (CA) is the only sustainable approach to...

Global consumption of grains is projected to double by 2050 due to projected growth in population and per capita consumption of grains directly and also in livestock production as incomes rise. Global food security depends on expanding current farming activities in a sustainable way to meet this...

The last decade has seen the nexus between increasing world population and the area of irrigated land broken, indicating that further population will need to be fed by improved water productivity rather than through increased irrigated area. But how much improvement is possible? This paper...

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has a mandate to improve the livelihoods of the poor in the semiarid tropical (SAT) regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, which is home to 550 million poor people. Sorghum, pearl millet, chickpea, pigeonpea and...