Re: How do they think the food supply can be increased so much?
Posted: Sun 29 Nov 2009, 22:02:45
Westerners need to stop romanticizing the life of the rural peasant. There's a common belief on this site that it would be great if everyone returned to the farm. It's not going to happen and very few would be interested in this.
Population is expected to grow from 7 billion in 2010 to 9.2 billion in 2050. That's a compound growth rate of only .7% a year. Round up to 1%/year to account for improved diet.
Can we improve global crop yields by 1% a year for the next 40 years? I don't know, but it doesn't sound impossible. If anyone has any real research on this subject, I'd like to check it out.
Idle speculation without any research to back it up is pointless and personal attacks against OF don't add much to the discussion.
Moreover, how do we know that these soils won't last long or that it won't be enough?
http://www.afrol.com/articles/33605
Population is expected to grow from 7 billion in 2010 to 9.2 billion in 2050. That's a compound growth rate of only .7% a year. Round up to 1%/year to account for improved diet.
Can we improve global crop yields by 1% a year for the next 40 years? I don't know, but it doesn't sound impossible. If anyone has any real research on this subject, I'd like to check it out.
Idle speculation without any research to back it up is pointless and personal attacks against OF don't add much to the discussion.
Moreover, how do we know that these soils won't last long or that it won't be enough?
http://www.afrol.com/articles/33605
afrol News, 22 June - A vast stretch of African savannah land that spreads across 25 countries has the potential to turn several African nations into global players in bulk commodity production, according to a study published by FAO and the World Bank.
The book, entitled Awakening Africa’s Sleeping Giant - Prospects for Commercial Agriculture in the Guinea Savannah Zone and Beyond, arrives at its positive conclusions by comparing the region with northeast Thailand and the Cerrado region of Brazil.
The study finds that at the moment only ten percent of the Guinea Savannah zone, a vast area of around 600 million hectares of land from Senegal to South Africa, with 400 million hectares suitable for farming, is actually cropped.
The Cerrado and northeast Thailand, like the Guinea Savannah both had physical disadvantages; abundant but unreliable rainfall patterns, poor soils and a high population density in the case of Thailand; and remoteness, soils prone to acidity and toxicity and low population in the case of the Cerrado, said the study.
In both countries, successive governments created the conditions for agricultural growth “characterized by favourable macroeconomic policies, adequate infrastructure, a strong human capital base, competent government administration, and political stability,” according to the publication.
Indeed, Africa is better placed today to achieve rapid development in agriculture than either northeast Thailand or the Cerrado when their agricultural transformation took off in 1980, the study argues.