FAO SAYS 70% MORE FOOD NEEDED TO FEED WORLD IN 2050
FAO SAYS 70% MORE FOOD NEEDED TO FEED WORLD IN 2050
(ANSA) - Rome, October 12 - Food production will have to increase by 70% over the next 40 years in order to feed the world's population, United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization Director General Jacques Diouf said Monday.
Opening a high-level expert forum in Rome on how to feed the world in 2050, Diouf listed challenges to producing enough food for the estimated 9.1 billion people who will inhabit the Earth by mid-century, around 2.3 billion more than today.
Diouf said a major obstacle in the way of feeding the world is climate change, which ''threatens to reduce agricultural output in developing countries by over 20%''.
''At the same time, the agricultural sector faces a shrinking labor force as over 600 million people move from rural areas into large urban centers,'' Diouf said.
FAO experts predict that urbanization will bring 60% of the world's population into cities by 2050, against 49% today.
A report issued by the organization last week put the cost of feeding an extra 2.3 billion people by 2050 at $83 billion USD per year in agricultural investments for developing countries.
The report said that most of the money could be expected from private investors but that public funding would be necessary to provide roads, water, power and sanitation services required for large-scale agriculture.
China and India alone will require one third of those investments, while experts say sub-Saharan Africa could reach food production targets with $11 billion per year.
According to the FAO, agricultural output south of the Sahara began growing faster than the population in 2008, in what the organization calls ''a promising break from the past''.
However, around 218 million people in the region, one third of the total population, are still suffering from chronic hunger and FAO experts say it will take a concerted effort on the part of local governments and intergovernmental organizations to ''maintain the positive momentum''.
The High-Level Expert Forum brings over 300 of the world's top food security experts to Rome to examine policy recommendations on feeding the world's hungry.
The two-day summit is expected to lay the groundwork for the World Summit on Food Security in November, which will convene world leaders to address the impact of the global economic crisis on the world's ability to feed itself. Photo:
