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...

By 2050, we face the challenge of feeding 50% more people within the finite and diminishing resources on the planet. Significant investment is going into the development of new crop varieties that will offer higher yields, greater pest resistance or better tolerance of adverse conditions. There...

The number of chronically hungry people currently hovers just below the one billion mark, according to FAO. That figure, however, hides an even greater problem. Roughly two billion people, most of them women and young children, suffer malnutrition associated with a lack of micronutrients and...

Modern biology is generating revolutionary advances in genetic knowledge and our capacity to change the genetic make up of crops and livestock. Much of this new science is proprietary, owned both by the private sector and increasingly by advanced public sector researchers, leading to a concern...

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...