Feeding a Hungry World -- Borlaug 318 (5849): 359 -- Science

Feeding a Hungry World -- Borlaug 318 (5849): 359 -- Science
Next week, more than 200 science journals throughout the world will simultaneously publish papers on global poverty and human development--a collaborative effort to increase awareness, interest, and research about these important issues of our time. Some 800 million people still experience chronic and transitory hunger each year. Over the next 50 years, we face the daunting job of feeding 3.5 billion additional people, most of whom will begin life in poverty. The battle to alleviate poverty and improve human health and productivity will require dynamic agricultural development.
Breakthroughs in wheat and rice production, which came to be known as the Green Revolution, signaled the dawn of applying agricultural science to the Third World's need for modern techniques. It began in Mexico in the late 1950s, spread to Asia during the 1960s and 1970s, and continued in China in the 1980s and 1990s. Over a 40-year period, the proportion of hungry people in the world declined from about 60% in 1960 to 17% in 2000. The Green Revolution also brought environmental benefits. If the global cereal yields of 1950 still prevailed in 2000, we would have needed nearly 1.2 billion more hectares of the same quality, instead of the 660 million hectares used, to achieve 2000's global harvest. Moreover, had environmentally fragile land been brought into agricultural production, the soil erosion, loss of forests and grasslands, reduction in biodiversity, and extinction of wildlife species would have been disastrous.
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Although sizable land areas, such as the cerrados of Brazil, may responsibly be converted to agriculture, most food increases will have to come from lands already in production. Fortunately, productivity improvements in crop management can be made all along the line: in plant breeding, crop management, tillage, fertilization, weed and pest control, harvesting, and water use. Genetically engineered crops are playing an increasingly important role in world agriculture, enabling scientists to reach across genera for useful genes to enhance tolerance to drought, heat, cold, and waterlogging, all likely consequences of global warming. I believe biotechnology will be essential to meeting future food, feed, fiber, and biofuel demand.