Today is World Population Day - an appropriate time to give consideration to the enormous task of feeding a rapidly growing population. Using modern innovations and technologies, Australian agriculture stands in a unique and powerful position to significantly contribute to providing viable solutions to meeting the challenges of global food security. With Australia’s population increasing by approximately 1,080 people every day and the UN predicting a global population of nearly 10 billion by 2050, agricultural industries around the world face the tremendous challenge of increasing food production by 70% while decreasing their environmental footprint and using limited arable land. The ratio of arable land to people has halved in the last fifty years, and will drop by a further 25% by 2050. While food security appears to be a daunting challenge, Australian farmers, along with the support of industry such as the plant science sector, have the ingenuity, knowledge and skills to find solutions. The plant science industry is providing the Australian farming sector with innovative tools such as modern chemical crop protection products and agricultural biotechnologies to meet the challenge. Alarmingly, 20-40% of the world’s food production is lost to pests, weeds and diseases. This number would double without effective crop protection products. In particular, it is estimated that yields of most fruit and vegetables, which are integral to a healthy diet, would fall by 50-95% without the use of fungicides to protect from disease. The use of agricultural biotechnology is another way to reduce pressure on agricultural resources by improving food quality and nutritional value, increasing the productivity of current crops and helping crops adapt to environmental stresses such as drought. Ag biotech has also provided significant environmental benefits. Biotech crops have reduced the need for 497 million kg of pesticides, and cut CO2 emissions by 27 billion kg in 2012 alone.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 00:50:08 +0000
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