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Chris Leaver
28 August 2008; Science Oxford
The world population has doubled to ca. 6.8 billion over the last 50 years and until recently the relative abundance of food has kept pace, with the poorest benefiting the most, although more than 900 million are malnourished and live below the poverty line. This dramatic increase in crop yields was due to a number of innovations: mechanisation, irrigation, genetics and plant breeding, nitrogen fertilisers, pesticides, and the developed world became complacent.
There has, however, been an environmental cost associated with modern high input agriculture and the world has lost 20% of its topsoil due to erosion, desertification and salinity, 20% of our agricultural land due to overgrazing and the generation of marginal land, and 33% of our forests. In addition, we now face the challenges of climate change as a result of massive fossil fuel usage resulting in increased greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide levels, decreased water availability, environmental pollution, loss of biodiversity, urbanisation and dietary upgrading, obesity in the developed world and malnutrition and starvation in the developing world.
