The 9 billion-people question

Economist writer John Parker poses the question how the world will feed an extra two billion people and finds agriculture needs to boost yields of staple crops. Not a major revelation, you would think, but the writer acknowledges plenty of people would argue the point.

His report also notes that while the concerns of critics of modern agriculture may be understandable, "the reaction against intensive farming is a luxury of the rich. Traditional and organic farming could feed European and Americans well. It cannot feed the world."

The Economist has led the way in coverage of this issue: http://www.economist.com/node/18200618

Have Grand Ambitions

The real attraction of the thesis that science can boost crop yields to unprecedented levels by overhauling the photosynthetic machinery in plants is the scale of its ambition.

Improving on a billion years of evolution to create crop plants that produce their own fertiliser, engineering the superior carbon-concentrating mechanism of cyanobacteria into the chloroplasts of less efficient crop plants - these are grand goals. The payoff is potentially a new Green Revolution.

New Scientist is provocative in its editorial stance on this, saying the photosynthetic machinery in plants is "hopelessly outmoded". The magazine quotes molecular biologist Ray Dixon of the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK, about the prospects and potential payoff of a billion-year upgrade: "These are seriously ambitious schemes for boosting food production. We've got to try them."

Grain inventory cushion hits acreage wall

Whichever way you look the evidence is clear - the grain inventory cushion is dangerously low.

The USDA runs its spotlight over the world's fields and grain silos and finds the same trend in all the major grain producing nations, depleted inventory and farmers unable to match demand. Some of the analysts that spoke to Bloomberg after the USDA data was released seemed to think increased planting by farmers could rebuild the cushion to some degree over the next two years, if the weather holds.

Others were more pessimistic. For example, Iowa farmer Terry Jones told Bloomberg that even a corn crop of 92 million acres in the US would not be enough to rebuild inventories because stocks are forecast to fall to 18 days of use. The pattern repeats across all countries and all food commodities. Demand is outstripping supply and the response on the supply side is limited by the time it takes to increase plantings and grow more crops, and critically by the "acreage wall" cited by Dan Basse, the president of AgResource Co, Chicago.

Surging commodity prices are making markets bullish on agriculture, amplifying price rises temporarily, but the underlying mega-trend seems more permanent.

Does food need a billion-year upgrade?

Apologies to New Scientist for pinching the phrase Billion-year Upgrade but it encapsulates a fascinating question about how the human race will feed itself this century.

Only two years after the 2008 food crisis that caused widespread hunger and rioting in food-insecure countries, agricultural commodity prices are almost back up to those record levels. The United Nations' World Food Price Index actually hit an all-time high last month and this month Bloomberg reports that Governments worldwide "will increase their role in global food markets and may boost stockpiles and subsidies or impose trade curbs to head off protests". Expect this to get worse before it gets better.

Adverse weather is blamed to some degree for the current spike, but there can be little doubt now that the underlying reason inventories of basic food ingredients are running down is growing demand and stagnating agricultural productivity. Unequal distribution and limited access to food have always been a factor for hunger and that hasn't changed. Basic supply and demand has changed and if population growth estimates over the next 40 years are correct we've got a problem.

The Billion-year Upgrade refers to an overhaul of the photosynthetic machinery of plants in order to produce more food on the world's finite arable land. A technological solution is not the only solution to the food problem, but it is a critical one. Organic is great, but it won't cut it on its own either. The Billion-year Upgrade proposition should refocus our minds on the importance of agricultural development to our survival.