Wikimedia, Joe DIn 2007 and 2008, due in part to rapidly rising energy costs and climatic extremes, the world experienced a sweeping food crisis, with food riots observed in more than 30 countries. In 2010 and 2011, unprecedented drought in Russia reduced the global supply of wheat, with social and political ramifications for wheat importing countries around the globe. Last summer’s extensive drought in the United States, the world’s largest grain exporter, suggests that food supply will, once again, continue to be an immediate and global concern.
Since the “green revolution” of the 1960s increased crop production around the world, agricultural science has served as a bulwark against global hunger. But demands have been relentless, and there is a clear need for more. More food for a global population that, in 2011, exceeded 7 billion. More for the additional 2 billion people that will join the population by 2040. And more cereal crops for biofuels production, and more grain for livestock production.
The constraints to meeting such demands are many. Urbanization removes half a million hectares of arable land from global crop production each year; competition for water supplies between industry and agriculture leads to diminished availability for irrigating crops; and the cost of fossil fuels, necessary for growing, transporting, processing, and ...
