Future food systems need to be smarter, more efficient

FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said Saturday that a "paradigm shift" was needed in food production to make the agriculture more sustainable, the FAO posted on its website.
Speaking at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture, held in Berlin as part of Green Week observances, Graziano da Silva said increasing competition for natural resource and emerging resource bottlenecks mean that global agriculture can no longer operate using a "business as usual" approach – the input-intensive agricultural development model used for the past 40 years is no longer sustainable, and a "paradigm shift" in food production is needed.
"Business as usual would mean a huge and simultaneous increase in the need for food, energy and water in the next decades: 60 percent more food, 50 percent more energy and 40 percent more water by 2050," he said.
FAO estimates point to the need to increase food production by 60 percent by 2050 to feed a population that will top the 9 billion mark.
Climate change and increasing competition between food and non-food agricultural products such as bioenergy have made the challenges of feeding the future more complex, said Graziano da Silva.
"But it is important not to forget that biofuel emerged with strength as an alternative energy source because of the need to mitigate fossil fuel production and greenhouse gases – and that need has not changed," he added.