And how will we feed another three billion as the world’s population grows from the current six billion to nine billion by 2050.

It will not be an easy task, but we won’t really have much choice in the matter.

The question is being taken seriously! Numerous books have been published on the subject, a conference was held at the European Parliament on 3 July 2008, and the FAO organised its “World Food Day” on 1 October 2008. And in the mean time, the planet is getting hotter and the number of hungry people is growing…

In autumn 2008, all that people were talking about was the financial crisis and the looming economic crisis. The food crisis of the start of the year was already forgotten, yet cereal prices were dropping again. The energy crisis was forgotten too, as oil prices had returned to more affordable levels. Does this mean that the events of 2007-2008 were a short-lived nightmare? Definitely not! While it is not for us to speak for the planet, it seems reasonable to say that it couldn't care less about the financial crisis or the cost of raw materials, it continues to grow warmer and give up its last natural resources. It is up to us, mankind, to distinguish between urgent matters (such as repairing damage caused by irresponsible bankers and traders) from truly important matters (such as feeding mankind and saving the planet). Agricultural engineers are in the front line, and are possibly slightly more aware of such worries.

It is time for rich countries to realise that the impression they had at the close of the 20th century, that they had a guaranteed food supply, was probably just a brief interlude in both historical and geographic terms: historical in that it only lasted a few decades, and geographical in that it only concerned a third of mankind. From now on we are going to find it particularly difficult to satisfy our societies’ cravings for agricultural products.

Demand for food continues to grow

The population keeps growing
The world population increases by over 200,000 people per day, or almost 80 million per year, all of whom need to be fed. It is expected to stabilise at around 9 billion in 2050, with 1.1 billion extra in Asia, 800 million in Africa and 400 million in Latin America. This increase alone means that worldwide agricultural production needs to rise by 1.2% each year.

A lot more people eat meat
Changing dietary habits must also be taken into account. In all climates and all cultures, a universal phenomenon can be observed: when populations which suffered food shortages for generations become better off, they quickly take a liking to sugars, fats and animal products (meat, milk, eggs) in general. However, vegetarians who turn to eating meat make much greater demands on the planet’s resources, and in particular those that will be in short supply: land, water and energy. We are talking about hundreds of millions of people. And even worse may be yet to come: imagine what could happen if Chinese labourers, who can now put chicken wings in their rice, were to start eating cheese, or if Indian workers, who already drink more milk, were to forego their belief in reincarnation and start eating meat as well.

Truly outrageous wastefulness
Between 10% and 15% of crops worldwide are lost, peaking at up to 50% in certain areas. For cereals, there are numerous causes: grain lost before or during harvest, fallen stems, rotted during storage, attacked by birds, insects or mould, blown away during transport or harvesting, and so on. This represents a huge potential source of savings in the 21st century, requiring massive investments in storage facilities in many third-world countries.
But many rich and developing countries have their own waste problems, which have shifted from production to consumption. The amount of food thrown away is phenomenal. From supermarkets whose staff often say that their biggest customer is the waste bin, to restaurants and canteens where health standards prohibit leftovers being reused, not to mention waste at home. After recent health scares, it is even becoming difficult to collect leftovers from restaurants or bakeries to feed pigs.
Furthermore, there is an upward trend to the size and the rich food content of portions served, particularly in the United States (servings in North America are 30 to 40% larger than in comparable European restaurants), which increases both obesity and the size of waste bins. We are entering the 21st century with more overweight people (1.1 billion, of whom some 400 million are obese) than undernourished people. According to the World Health Organisation, obesity is the first non-infectious epidemic in the history of mankind.

One billion new consumers
As long as we are unable to find either effective means of storing energy or alternatives to oil, the appetite of one billion vehicles on our roads (a number that is rising by 60 million per year), represents a considerable threat of increased demand for agricultural products. If this comes to a head, it will inevitably result in a major clash between the plates of the poor and the petrol tanks of the rich.
The first generation of biofuels, made from cereals and vegetable oil crops, is a truly historic mistake. Initially they seemed highly promising: they were going to prop up falling prices, stave off the greenhouse effect, create jobs and contribute to national self-sufficiency in energy. But they have not lived up to their promise: they cause serious shortages and have a prohibitively high ecological cost, to the extent that some even suggest that they worsen the greenhouse effect.
The real goal is easily defined: we need to find, rather like Brazilian sugar cane, plants which generate a lot of biomass from a little energy, consume less water, and can be grown elsewhere, not in fields currently used for food crops. This is the challenge facing second generation biofuels, for which we must invest quickly and effectively.
The challenge facing the world's farmers can be summed up very easily: agricultural production must be increased by 2% each year, and thus doubled by 2050. But the problems faced differ from one region of the world to another. In Africa, agricultural production will need to be multiplied by five, or “only” by three if Africans remain vegetarian (the population will double from 800 million to over 1.5 billion, and already 30 to 50% are undernourished). In Asia, production must be multiplied by 2.3, which is a significant challenge given that productivity is already high and land is in short supply. In Latin America, a factor of “only” 1.9 will be enough, which should be feasible by increasing both productivity and arable land. In Europe, the population is likely to decrease (only two countries, Ireland and France, are currently above the population renewal level) and supplies should therefore be assured. It is worth noting, though, despite all the declarations about closing borders, that Europe will see mass immigration, even if it is just to maintain the working population.

True difficulties in increasing food supplies

Looking at worldwide agricultural production, we could take an optimistic stance and observe the progress made in the 20th century, during which the world population grew from 1.8 to 6.3 billion. Since we managed to feed an extra 4.5 billion people in one century, coping with another 3 billion in the next century should be relatively straightforward. More pessimistically, though, we should note that we have merely succeeded in meeting an easy challenge: producing more food with a lot more inputs, more land, more water, more energy and more chemicals. The challenge for the 21st century will be rather more complicated: we will again have to produce more (and better), but this time with less land, less water, less energy and fewer chemicals. We are reaching the planet's practical limits, and it will take all our collective intelligence and mobilisation to achieve this new goal.
Over the last year, the grim records kept by the FAO show that the number of people affected by famine has started to rise again. The current figure stands at 925 million, and it seems likely that in 2009 we will cross the symbolic threshold of one billion hungry people on our planet.

Global warming poses serious problems for farming
2007 was the year the planet started to take notice of global warming and the horrendous threat that it poses to humanity, symbolised by the Nobel Peace Prize awarded jointly to Al Gore and the IPCC.
Global warming holds almost nothing good in store for farming. Rather than bringing relief through gentle rain, we are likely to see more extreme phenomena: on the one hand deserts will spread, river beds and water tables will dry up, and on the other we will see heavy flooding, storms and hurricanes. The total amount of rainfall will increase slightly, to balance the higher rate of evaporation, but it will be even less evenly distributed. And we must not forget the effects rising sea levels will have on the highly fertile land around vast river deltas and the salt brought into water tables. And it would be a fallacy to think that climate change will only affect poor, tropical countries. Experts expect that by 2050 the climate in Angers will be like that in Nice today, and the climate in Nice will be more like that of Algiers. If their predictions are true, this means that we will have to transform production systems in the northern half of France, preferring winter crops and setting up irrigation, while efficient farming will become impossible in the south-east without permanent irrigation. Major agricultural and environmental investments will therefore be essential very soon, even in France.

The amount of farmland is decreasing
Good arable land is in very short supply on our planet. In fact we only cultivate around 1.5 billion hectares, or some 12% of the 13.1 billion hectares that are above sea level.
Worldwide, there is still some room for expansion, but mostly in the tropical rain forests of the Amazon basin, the Congo, and South-East Asia, notably in Indonesia and Malaysia. Clearing these forests to make way for farmland carries a double risk, in that it will increase global warming and also contribute to the desertification of these ecologically sensitive regions. Yet that is exactly what we are doing, chopping down 140,000 km² every year, of which only half is replanted as forest. And even that is not enough to increase the total surface area of our “world farm”, as year after year we are losing more land than we gain. This is due to the faster pace of erosion and urbanisation.
In 1960, each person on the planet potentially had 0.43 ha of arable land at their disposal. This has dropped to 0.25 ha today, and we can estimate that by 2050 there will be only 0.15 ha available per person.

Water for irrigation will be in short supply
Water is absolutely essential for growing plants. On average, it takes one tonne of water to produce a kilogram of cereals. The average European indirectly consumes over 4 tonnes of “virtual” water every day.
Mankind has always attempted to work around nature's variability. The 20th century saw massive investment in irrigation to compensate for irregular rainfall. A total of 200 million hectares worldwide are currently irrigated, or about one in every seven fields. It is clear that we will not be able to double this area. The 44,000 dams that have been built around the world all need upkeep, and new structures will be more expensive as they will necessarily be in harder-to-reach locations or less favourable for water storage. Decreasing water tables also put the brake on irrigation. This is a major problem in many parts of the world, where water is pumped out quicker than it can be repleted. Furthermore, much of the water used for irrigation worldwide is taken from rivers swollen in the summer by glacial meltwater, but once the glaciers have finished melting this source will quite literally run dry.
Irrigating crops is going to become an increasingly difficult endeavour. Experts estimate that the amount of irrigated land worldwide is unlikely to exceed 240 million hectares, or only 20% more than today. We will inevitably have to work hard to save water and find less thirsty plants to feed ourselves.

As energy is becoming a rare, expensive commodity, all agricultural techniques need to be revised
The era of abundant and affordable energy is coming to an end, but, like other techniques invented during that easy-going time, current agricultural methods are energy-intensive. With highly mechanised techniques involving multiple inputs (fertilisers, pesticides, and so on), over 100 litres oil equivalent is needed to produce 1 tonne of wheat.
The 28 million farmers around the world who use a tractor are currently at a significant advantage over the 250 million who use animal power, not to mention the billion farmers who depend only on their own physical strength. But in a world where oil is becoming an expensive luxury, we will have to reinvent modern agricultural techniques.
To start with, farmers will have to plough much less, cut down on synthetic fertilisers and stop heating greenhouses in winter. The majority of agricultural production will need to be relocated closer to places of consumption

Agro-chemistry is running out of steam
A significant fraction of the huge increase in agricultural yields in the second half of the 20th century has been achieved through chemicals, which are the keystone of the “green revolution”. In France, a field of wheat today systematically produces three or four times as much corn as at the end of the Second World War This has been achieved by simultaneously outsourcing four functions: nourishing plants (with fertilisers), treating them (with fungicides), keeping away pests (with insecticides) and weeds (with weedkillers). The strategy has achieved remarkable success, multiplying worldwide production by 2.6 over the last fifty years.
We must now face up to three problems at the same time: rising energy prices, dwindling underground resources making these substances increasingly rare and expensive, and the drawbacks in terms of pollution affecting soil, ground water and coastlines.
Furthermore, the yield curve levelled off in the 1990s, suggesting that we are reaching the limits of this technology. But there is an even more serious problem: there are no new functions to invent that could stimulate a new rise in productivity.
When we come to the bottom line, chemicals will probably be unable to “save” humanity a second time, the way they did last century.

Less and less biodiversity, more and more diseases
Mankind is taking huge risks with respect to biodiversity. On the one hand, we are speeding up the extinction of plant and animal species that we are not even aware of, in particular by destroying habitats such as tropical rain forests, coral reefs and mangroves. On the other hand, we are putting all our eggs in the same basket in terms of food resources, by selecting only the most productive varieties and breeds. For example, France's four million dairy cows are sired by the sperm of a mere hundred breeding bulls, and only four varieties of wheat account for two-thirds of the country's harvest.
At the same time, epidemics around the world are on the rise. Some will be caused by global warming, which reduces the number of days of frost in temperate countries and thus stops larva being destroyed. Europe has already been hit by bluetongue in sheep, and it can expect to see outbreaks of African horse sickness, Rift valley fever, West Nile fever, Leishmaniasis, Leptospirosis and others. What is more, the increasing population density of both humans and livestock in certain hot and humid tropical countries without effective healthcare systems, and the proximity of humans with animals formerly isolated in virgin forests, are objectively favourable to mutations of viruses and bacteria and cross-transmission between birds and people. For example, France only breeds 215 million chickens, almost all confined in hen houses, whereas Brazil has 1,100 million, Indonesia 1,249 million and China 4,360 million! There are 15 million pigs in France compared with 489 million in China. The list goes on.
These two phenomena are liable to prove an explosive combination in the 21st century, with effects on livestock farming and meat supply as well as human health.

New techniques to satisfy growing demand

A good proportion of the productive agricultural techniques in use today, which have successfully coped with feeding 4.5 billion new inhabitants on our planet, were invented in the second half of the 20th century, during what has been called the green revolution. Unfortunately productivity increases have levelled off over the last fifteen years.

New, ecologically intensive farming
What we urgently need, then, is a new “doubly green” agronomic revolution, coupled with “ecologically intensive” agriculture. The basic idea is that the majority of artificial additives should be replaced by natural ones. This will mean letting animals and plants (fungi, earthworms, honey bees, ladybirds, bacteria, and so forth) become farming assistants, taking over the roles of machinery and chemicals.
Huge advances are needed, and for that we will need to reconcile those who want to produce better and those who want to produce more. Unfortunately the two have been on opposite sides until today.
Two major intellectual cultures must now find ways to work together: agronomists who favour active intervention, and ecologists who prefer observation. Finding the key to agro-ecology will require both understanding and action, and will enable us to produce both more and better with less, at the same time. We will also have to overcome the divisions between researchers and farmers, and achieve a new form of research founded on local dialogue between theoreticians and practitioners; what we need to achieve is not just one new type of agriculture but tens of thousands, each perfectly adapted to local micro-conditions. This can be summed up as a three-way alliance between agronomic, social and ecological sciences.

Advances in genetics provide an avenue for progress

Feeding mankind in the 21st century is such a serious and important challenge that it would seem insane to deprive ourselves of one of the most significant achievements of the century, greater control over genetics. This age-old science is based on the old proverb “blood will out”. Successive selection has long been used to make considerable improvements to plant varieties and animal breeds.
The turning point stems from our understanding of these processes, through genetic sequencing. We are no longer limited to observing that a particular plant variety or animal breed is more productive, we are starting to understand why. The temptation is to select only individuals which have a specific desirable gene, or to transfer this gene into other individuals to obtain a consistent line with the desired characteristic. We are taking our first baby steps in this science, and the first genetically modified organisms from the early 21st century will seem derisory in 50 years’ time when thousands will be in regular use.
The idea that a few genes will save humanity seems rather simplistic at a time when everything is getting more complicated, more diversified, and more closely adapted to local ecological conditions. But believing that we can make do without an entire scientific discipline and still feed 9 billion people by 2050 seems just as naive. If we can find plants that need less water to grow – because, like desert plants, they could close their stomata to prevent transpiration when temperatures rise – this would be a decisive breakthrough for mankind, particularly allowing for global warming.
Equally beneficial would be to succeed in increasing the resistance of certain plants to cold, heat, altitude, salt, stagnant water, mould, and so on. Or finding plants that are richer in proteins, vitamins, antioxidants, omega 3, amino acids, or that contain fewer allergens or indigestible elements. Or plants, that could provide, a sustainable source of fuel for vehicles. There is a wealth of possibilities for researchers to investigate.
We should not lessen our resolve just because of the imperfections of the first GMOs, or the social, legal and financial conditions applied by the first company to venture into this area. Europe’s opinion on the subject matters; it has different values, different priorities, different habits and a different legal, social and economic environment than the USA or China. It is time it spoke out, rather than merely reacting to the actions of others. In particular, it should initiate major public or publicly-backed research programmes, with democratically discussed priorities, with its own balance between innovation and caution, and a policy that avoids privatising lifeforms.
Do we need to point out again that agriculture is at the centre of the issues facing us in the 21st century? It bears the burden of feeding the entire world population in the best possible conditions (considering both immediate needs and longer term health) as well as providing employment and subsistence resources for billions of farmers. But it is also tasked with trapping excess carbon in the atmosphere and regenerating oxygen, preserving water quality and biodiversity, as well as ensuring that the countryside is welcoming and protected from unbridled urban encroachment.
To achieve all this, research policies will need to be refocused, to quickly invent a new sort of agriculture with an intense environmental component, and develop genes that will make the tasks easier. At the same time, agriculture will need to be reorganised, providing unfailing support to farmers in major geo-ecological and geo-economic regions that are relatively protected from outside competition.

If, through lack of determined and effective support from the rest of society, agriculture fails to meet these challenges, severe crises and shortages will affect an increasing proportion of the 7 billion human beings on the planet in 2011 (9 billion in 2050). As one crisis will lead to another, authoritarian regimes may end up having the final say, with many problems ending up being settled by armed conflicts.