The Greatest Challenge Facing Agriculture over the Next 5 Years
The potential to raise food production even with existing technologies seems considerable but requires adapting new policies to face the challenge posed by rapidly changing socio-economic and environmental conditions. Multiple challenges need to be overcome in order for agriculture to continue as a mainstream food source. These challenges range from food demand and water security to soil quality. Without better consideration for the food demand, water management and agricultural intensification, formulating new policies will be challenging as well.
We can begin discussing the challenges of the agriculture from the beginning, the food demand. Challenges begin to arise even before agriculture went through the Green Revolution. World population estimates are set to rise to 9.1 billion by the year 2050, 34 percent higher than today. Nearly all of this increase is expected to take place in developing countries. In order to feed this growing population, food production must be increased by at least 65 percent. Cereals, fruits, vegetables, meets, and dairy products must all expand their production rates to meet increased demand for food. Annual cereal production, for instance, must rise from 2.1 to 3.9 billion tones while annual meat production will need to rise from 200 to 470 million tones [1]. However, expanded production could cause other large challenges since doubling of production requires more lands and water. Therefore, the food production challenge ahead is not small or easy. It requires increasing the productivity of farming systems in ways that do not damage the natural resources.
Despite the projected food production in the coming decades, the year 2025 is predicted to be critical for global water security[1]. Therefore, the second challenge facing agriculture is to develop policies that contribute to safe water resources and considering them as an engine of growth. In countries with relatively rapid economic growth, the need to use water resources for irrigation and urban areas is sharply reducing fresh water availability and negatively affecting aquatic biodiversity of rivers, lakes, and aquifers. Fresh water is becoming more and more scarce as a resource, and this is particularly true of water available for primary production of food. Unfortunately, there is no standard prescription for achieving a balance between urban developments and conserving water resources, but understanding the relationship between water usage and ecosystems is essential. Future sustainable water management should provide clear guidelines to balance these needs in order to secure water for sustainable food production. A public policy initiative would act as a catalyst and push the thinking in this direction.
The third challenge facing agriculture over the next 5 years is the soil quality. The USDA-Natural Resource Conservation Service defines soil quality as a condition of “how well soil does what we want it to do” [2]. The quality of farming soils is still a major concern in the effort to make agriculture a sustainable food producer. A part of this issue is a decline of fertile soils due to the physical degradation. According to the USDA-2007 national resources inventory, 1.73 billion tons of topsoil are still lost each year in the US [2]. The main concern is that there is not only a finite amount of fertile lands but also several environmental problems that make food production from some soils infeasible. Farmers’ dependence on chemical fertilizers stems in part from the erosion of topsoil, and this dependence causes several environmental issues, such as ground water pollution. Conventional farming system is still one of the main- if not the main- leading causes of Eutrophication and groundwater contamination. We must develop the sustainable concept in agricultural systems that does not loss soil productivity nor contaminate surrounding environments.
Our leaders need to know more about how best to use lands and water resources to accelerate yield growth while improving resilience in the face of agricultural issues. New policies should be performance-based policies that pay according to performance not just production. This consideration is not only attainable, but also necessary because of the dramatic increase of global food demand.
References:
FAO (2013) How to Feed the World in 2050. Annual FAO report.
USDA-NRCS (2010) Soil Erosion on Cropland, 2007 National Resources Inventory.