FAO reviews food supply predictions
10/02/2012
In comments delivered at a seminar in Geneva at the start of February, Dr Graziano da Silva surprised delegates that the FAO no longer believed an increase of 70% in food production between now and 2050 would be needed to feed the world, as it predicted in 2009. Instead, he said 60% growth in crop production, for fuel as well as food, would be enough.
Three years ago, the Rome-based organisation said it thought there would be 9.1 billion people in the world in 2050. The general-secretary said at the Geneva event that the impact of population would be less strong, not least because populations in some key markets, including Japan, China, Europe and his native Brazil, were likely to decline over this timeframe.
Secondly, he said people in some of the most populous parts of the world are going to have to learn to live with less, owing to a lack of space to grow more crops and raise more livestock. Finally, he said there would still be high levels of poverty in some parts of the world in 2050 and that previous predictions of rising levels of consumer spending were likely to prove inaccurate in many cases.
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