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.
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