June 10, 2013
Who will feed the masses? Forty years from now the world will be home to 9 billion people. The coming population burst casts a shadow over agriculture — a colossal feeding task looms with no precedent in history.
Demography is a cruel science — filled with cold numbers and alarming projections. Take the calculation bowl and throw in a bit of death rate and a spoonful of birth rate. Add a pinch of natural catastrophe, a heap of war, and a touch of disease for good measure. Stir up the numbers and out comes 9 billion people by 2050.
And yet, despite a 9-billion passenger population train only 40 years from the station, agricultural innovation remains under the thumb of red tape and ideology. “Sticking with tradition has its allure of comfort. But the dim light of doing nothing carries more risks than experimenting with new technologies. Let us act with courage and a sense of urgency. We cannot afford to be seduced by the dim light of technological stagnation,” said Professor Calestous Juma, a prominent African academic. Juma, in a speech titled “A Plea for Agricultural Innovation,” at McGill University in Montreal on June 3, ripped the inaction of bureaucrats and politicians. “Evidence is stacking up against catastrophists and skeptics as emerging economies become major beneficiaries of the biotechnology revolution.”