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Demand grows for more, better food
Several companies share a common view of feeding the growing population.
The New Vision for Agriculture is an attempt to answer the challenge of feeding more than 9 billion people projected to inhabit the earth by 2050, according to Jerry Steiner with Monsanto, who says many of those people will eat better than people are eating today.
“We’re seeing an increase in protein in the diet, and that means that we’re going to see probably twice as much demand as we saw in the year 2000,” said Steiner, at Monsanto Headquarters in St. Louis Thursday. “And the question that really comes around it is how to we equip the world’s farmers to be able to meet that demand?”
Steiner says the 20 participating companies are focused on 20/20/20.
“We need to think of three things at once,” said Steiner, “achieving 20 percent rate of growth and productivity each decade, producing each ton of food with a 20 percent smaller footprint in terms of use of natural resources, and third, that we want to see a 20 percent reduction in rural poverty in each decade.”
The companies, along with some government bodies and institutions, are taking on the effort under the auspices of the World Economic Forum.
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