By Val Giddings and Matthew Stepp. Feeding a hot and crowded
planet is quickly becoming one of the principal challenges of our time. As the
global population continues to grow and demands more food, climate change and
extreme weather are putting new strains on food production. Meeting these
challenges require game-changing agricultural innovation—the equivalent of many
Green Revolutions—to deliver more productive, climate-resilient crops.
The world has been here before. Since
Thomas Malthus published his Essay on the
Principle of Population in 1798, policymakers have debated the challenge of
feeding a growing global population. Despite past successes, this problem is
only getting more complex.
By 2050, global population is expected
to exceed 9 billion and food demand will double. Meanwhile, climate change is already
exerting a wide range of impacts on global agriculture, and it is only expected
to get worse. According to reports by the United Nations and the World Bank,
warmer temperatures will shift precipitation patterns, place additional stress
on water resources, and alter the range and growing season of important staples
such as wheat, rice, and corn. Droughts and heat waves will also become more
common and severe, further disrupting agriculture in afflicted regions.
Producing sufficient food in this
rapidly changing world is a Herculean task and one that can only be achieved
through historic increases in crop productivity and resilience.
In boosting crop productivity, farmers
have two options: expand agricultural land or increase the productivity of
existing crops. Expanding agricultural land is not a solution because most
fertile regions are already in use and others provide important ecosystem
services to the planet. For example, the Amazon has been referred to as “the
lungs of the world” due to its importance in the carbon cycle. Farmers are
therefore restricted to improving the productivity of crops on existing arable
land to increase food production.
Unfortunately, things are moving in the
wrong direction. Since the end of the Green Revolution, which delivered
unprecedented productivity increases in the 1960s and 1970s, annual growth in
agricultural production has slowed and now stands at nearly half of its
revolutionary peak.
Crop resiliency must also increase to
meet the stresses posed by climate change and to enhance yields in regions with
more severe weather fluctuations. One key area that is currently being
addressed by plant geneticists is increasing the water-use efficiency of crops.
If we can enhance the ability of plants to absorb and metabolize water, crops
will be less affected by drought and growing seasons may be extended in arid
regions. Furthermore, scientists are attempting to develop targeted genes that
could prevent certain diseases in plants or reduce insect infestation.
Unfortunately, next generation breakthroughs
to address productivity and resilience require greater understanding of plant
genomics and the ability to manipulate multiple genes within an organism. This
requires additional R&D investment, specifically in the area of genetically
modified foods, and greater international collaboration to further scientific
knowledge and advance the development and deployment of new technologies.
Spurring this wave of innovation won’t
be easy, and it will take significant policy leadership.
First, world governments must spend far
more on agricultural research and development. According to the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, current global public investments in agricultural R&D total
just over $20 billion per year. To put this into context, the US government
alone spends over $30 billion per year on health R&D and over $80 billion
on defence-related R&D. To create more productive and resilient crops, we
must at least triple existing research investment and refocus public research programs
on breakthrough leaps in crop technology.
Second, governments must stand up to the
false propaganda perpetuated by some advocates and eliminate or prevent
scientifically indefensible laws and regulations related to Genetically
Modified Organisms (GMOs). Early in their history, agricultural biotechnology was
made a battlefront in the culture wars over science, technology, and society. A
vast body of experience has since accumulated, and with it an unmatched safety
record. Today, the overwhelming scientific consensus—endorsed by the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, the UK’s Royal Society, and many others—is
that GMO crops are as safe as other crops. Therefore, existing international
regulatory systems designed specifically for GMOs must be reconsidered. Where
regulations are not scientifically defensible, they must be reformed to reflect
the best available science.
Finally, governments must strengthen
international institutions to serve as renewed hubs for agricultural
innovation. The research models that boosted crop productivity in the past are
not enough to address today’s agricultural challenges, and research
institutions need to adapt accordingly. Fortunately, there are positive examples
of next-generation agricultural research doing just that. For instance,
Monsanto and the Gates Foundation have partnered to create a unique
collaboration to address water and crop resource issues in Africa. In addition,
we must strengthen global research consortiums, such as the Consultative Group
on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR), and create new mechanisms to
enhance the dissemination of these technologies to the parts of the world where
they will do the most good.
Feeding the world’s population is one of
the central challenges of this century and current technology is simply not sufficient.
We must transform and reinvest in our international agricultural innovation ecosystem
to produce more productive, resilient crops for a hungrier and warmer world.
This is the one of our most powerful tools to meet the needs of today’s and
tomorrow’s population.
Val
Giddings is a Senior Fellow with the Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation (ITIF), Mathew Stepp is a Senior Policy Analyst with ITIF and Mark
Caine is a Research Fellow with the London School of Economics. They are
co-authors of the report: Feeding the Planet in a Warming World: Building
Resilient Agriculture through Innovation.
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