The world’s population is expanding. Right now, global population stands at around 6.4 billion people. By 2050, it is projected to reach nearly 9 billion. Most of those people, 7.7 billion, will be living in what we now call the developing world.
Right now, about 840 million people are going hungry. What’s it going to be like in the future? Will we be able to provide food for everyone?
Well, there’s good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?
OK here’s the good news: Even though world population is still growing, it’s not growing as fast as it used to. Some UN scenarios have world population leveling off somewhere around the middle of the century. After that it might actually start to decline. The demand for food will continue to increase, but perhaps not as quickly as in the past.
The other piece of good news is: so far, so good. Even during the peak years of the population explosion, agricultural production was able to keep pace with population growth. This surge in production has been called the "green revolution". Find out more about the
green revolution.
OK, now the bad news. The bad news is pretty obvious: even though food production has kept up with population growth, there are still over 800 million people on the planet who go to bed hungry. Millions of people are hungry because they cannot afford to buy food. Even if we manage to produce enough food for the world’s population, there’s no guarantee that everyone will get enough to eat. If the population of extremely poor people grows, the hunger crisis will become even more severe. Find out more about
hunger and poverty.
The other piece of bad news is that increases in food production have come at a high price to the environment. We've boosted food production by applying more chemicals, clearing more land, using more water and reducing biodiversity. But we can’t keep on going like this. The environment can’t handle it. Our great challenge is to increase food production in ways that are environmentally sustainable. That’s what we mean by "food forever". To find out what FAO is doing to make food production sustainable, click on some of the links below:
