Need for New
Ways to Grow Food
Arvind
Kumar pandey
According to a recent report released by the UN Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and reported by IRIN News agency, in
coming four decades many parts of the world will have run out of water
for farming and people will probably need to have enough money to buy
food. The report that is said to be the first-ever authoritative
analysis of the state of the world's land and water resources, looks at
land and water from a food security perspective. Considering 75 percent
of the population in developing countries is poor, lives in rural areas
and depends on agriculture for income and food, the report states that
it is now estimated that more than 40 percent of the world's rural
population lives in river basins that are physically water scarce.
To feed a
burgeoning global population, estimated to hit nine billion by 2050, we
will have to produce another one billion tonnes of cereals and 200
million extra tonnes of livestock products every year. A growing
population will also put a squeeze on the per capita amount of land
available in developing countries, which is expected to halve (to 0.12
hectare) by 2050. Various trade-offs will be required to help countries
feed themselves: intensification of agriculture rather than expansion,
and irrigation systems rather than depending on rainfall. More than
four-fifths of production gains will have to occur largely on existing
agricultural land, but all will involve policy decisions that need to be
grounded in an agricultural approach that is not only friendly to land
and water resources, but also to the ecosystem at large.
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