By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Improvements in crop genetics and wasteful, inefficient farming and food management provide the biggest gains in a plan to triple agricultural production on today’s global farm acreage, with the potential shifts displayed above. This vision of a path to feeding roughly 9 billion people with rising living standards, while also limiting deforestation and other damage to ecosystems, comes from Jason Clay, a longtime analyst of the intersection of food and the environment and a senior vice president of the World Wildlife Fund.
Here’s his draft paper on this strategy. The genetic work he describes includes all
uses of genetic research to improve plant productivity or farming efficiency.
Genetic modification, the realm of the GMO’s that are anathema to some
environmentalists and much of Europe, is a subset of that arena. [At the Climate, Mind and Behavior Conference of the Garrison Institute on Thursday, Clay
laid out the logic behind working with big corporations to foster food
production that can fit on a finite planet. He made a point that he stressed at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of science: "In the next 40 years we're going to have to
produce as much food as was produced in last 8,000."]