Challenges Facing World Agriculture

Challenges Facing World Agriculture

  • Submitted By: belerang
  • Date Submitted: 03/20/2009 6:04 AM
  • Category: Science
  • Words: 2557
  • Page: 11
  • Views: 2

Introduction
The major challenges that are facing the world today are nothing of the political or economical issue, but it’s something more that we take for granted. I’m talking about the problems that world agriculture is facing today. Is amazing how this problem is having a huge impact on the world. Following a dramatic rise in world population; increases in demand from fast developing nations; the diversion of significant volumes of farm commodities into bio-fuel; the preservation of land for specific environmental purposes; and changes in the world’s climate, we once again face the prospect of food shortages. What are the prospects for the future? Will we be able to feed the world’s people and accommodate the growing population, which expands by about 230,000 people per day? For many years, researchers have been trying to develop ways on how best may these challenges be met. Through my research, I found that organic agriculture is the only way to go.
Challenge I: Global Food Security
The first and continuing challenge facing world agriculture is global food security. To produce enough food to feed the growing world population. World population could reach 8 billion people by 2025. Nearly all the increase of the 2 billion people in the next 25 years are from developing countries. The urban population in developing countries will rise by numbers. The implications of urbanization are significant for the food system. It is estimated that people living in rural areas depend on their own production for more than 60 percent of their food supply. People living in urban areas, however, depend on the market for close to 90 percent of their food supply. So every time a person moves from a rural to an urban setting, needed market supplies must increase by a factor of 2.
Where will this food come from? If trends of the last 50 years continue, expanded trade will not be the answer. Since 1960 world grain production has more than doubled, and world grain trade also...

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