Is Food Production the Biggest Challenge of The Next 25 Years?

The estimated world population at 10:00 a.m. CST, February 5, 2010 is roughly 6.8 Trillion by most projections. It has increased more than two and a half times from the 2.5 billion humans on earth in 1950. During that 60 years, we relied on genetic improvements, more effective pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers and improved land production practices. We also put millions of acres of once natural forests, prairies and wetlands through clearing and draining projects.

This came at a huge future cost to the environment. Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University may have put it best when giving his presentation to the World Food Prize’s Norman E. Borlaug International Symposium. He stated and I quote:


“It (the food industry) is the number-one sector of greenhouse-gas emissions in the world. This is because around 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions come from clearing rain forest and other forest for pastureland and cropland. And roughly another 12-15 percent reflect the carbon dioxide of fossil-fuel use in food production, the methane from our rice paddies and livestock, and the nitrous oxides that come from the now more than 100 million tons of nitrogen-based fertilizers, which we absolutely need to feed the planet but which have fundamentally altered the nitrogen flux and are a major independent source of greenhouse gas forcings….

What food does is pervasive in terms of its anthropogenic impacts. The food question is the number-one driver of habitat loss for other species. And there’s hardly a class of species around the world that is not suffering a significant decline of abundance because its habitat is being taken by humanity for the purpose, essentially, of feeding ourselves.

Water stress I’ve already mentioned; [it’s] multifaceted, whether it’s the 50 or 60 thousand dams on major rivers around the world, whether it’s the groundwater depletion, whether it’s the evanescent use of glacier melt, which will no longer be available in 40 or 50 years. This is essentially the key input, of course, to food production. And the food sector, to put it conversely, is by far the leading consumer of freshwater around the world.

The food industry is the source of the nitrogen and phosphorous loading that affects what we know in the Mississippi and in the Gulf of Mexico as the dead zone. But now science has shown that [there are] about 130 significant hypoxic zones in estuaries on virtually every populated river system around the world.”


We cannot continue business as usual. Most population projections estimate that there will be 9 trillion human inhabitants sometime between 2040 and 2050! This is another 2.2 trillion mouths to feed with very little quality land remaining to clear or otherwise make fit for agricultural production, most of this population in undeveloped or developing countries. It also means that while those that can afford natural, organic and local foods can opt for them, it is not the solution to our growing food demand. It would of course help the stress on food production if we all ate less meat, but that by itself is not enough.

Of course, like all major problems there are incredible opportunities. The world will need even better genetics, more environmentally friendly pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers and lower impact farming practices. This will all need to be done in a relatively short time period by scientific standards, probably in the next twenty years. Those that can discover and commercialize these opportunities in a timely manner stand to make millions of dollars.

I believe that at some point the angel and venture community will see the opportunity in agricultural and food technology industry and begin focusing on it. Those that do it sooner than later will be the big winners. What is your perspective?