Ethiopian Scientist
Calls Food Shortage "Ticking Time Bomb"

15 October, 2009 | Jeanne Bernick
Farm Journal Crops & Issues Editor

The culmination of a booming world population and shortage of land
and resources for food production is a “ticking time bomb”, says
Gebisa Ejeta, a distinguished professor of agronomy at Purdue
University and 2009 World Food Prize recipient. The World Food
Prize is considered the Nobel Prize of agriculture.

“In just the next four to five decades, we need to double food
production on the same amount of land,” Ejeta says. “It’s taken us
since the beginning of civilization just to reach the level of food
production we are at today. This is an urgent situation.”

    The U.N. Food and
    Agriculture
    Organization (FAO)
    reports that any
    added farmland
    would help produce
    only 20% of the
    additional food on
    our planet will need
    in 2050, and 10%
    would come from
    increased cropping
    intensity.

    That means 70% of
    the world’s additional
    food needs can be
    produced only with
    new and existing
    agricultural
    technologies,
according to the FAO. Last year’s economic recession and food
price crisis also showed the world it is not as awash in food as
experts once thought.

Gains in food and feed productivity from now on must be achieved
through better, higher efficiencies in crop production, adds Ejeta.
But the concern today is that agricultural research has declined
globally over the past two decades.

“Agricultural science has become a victim of its own success,” Ejeta
says. Farming became a profitable undertaking and agricultural
research dramatically transformed production practices and drew
investment from private industry, and increased crop yields, he says

“An unfortunate result is that society has taken agriculture for
granted,” Ejeta says. “Declines in public funding for agriculture
research, both here and abroad, has led to fewer scientific
interventions to advance agriculture.”

The good news, Ejeta says, is that in 2009 world leaders have
reawakened to food shortage concerns. “There is a new call for an
end to complacency and a revitalization of agricultural research that
is focused on alleviating hunger,” he says.
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