There was little in its title to suggest it would haunt humanity for more than 200 years – yet the predictions contained in Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798 have been a persistent source of alarm.
Establishing an English tradition in grim forecast-making, the Anglican clergyman warned that the only way our over-inhabited planet could avoid “gigantic famine” would be through “war, pestilence, epidemics and plague”.
The Malthusian nightmare has been the subject of fierce debate across the agricultural industry ever since, and has recently taken on even greater prominence as the world population approaches the 7.5 billion mark.
Even though the rate of population growth is slowing, it’s still predicted that there will be around 9 billion people inhabiting our planet by 2050. But having 1.5 billion more mouths to feed will not be the only problem. Appetites will also be more voracious. With citizens in emerging markets becoming richer, their demands are sure to exact a heavy toll on the food industry. The consultancy firm McKinsey estimates that, in China and India alone, about 1.1 billion people will have joined middle class income groups between 2005 and 2025.
That could lead to a huge increase in meat consumption and an extraordinary expansion in demand for grazing pastures and animal feedstock, which would have devastating consequences for other parts of the food chain.
A changing climate
Complicating matters further for the farming sector is climate change.
The US government’s Environmental Protection Agency says that warmer temperatures may make crops grow more quickly and that for grains such as wheat or barley, faster growth will reduce the time that seeds have to mature, resulting in significantly smaller yields.
Pastureland can also be adversely affected by an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, meaning farmers would have to produce more crops to get the same nutritional benefits for their animals. In addition, livestock farmers are fearful of the impact of unusually hot weather, which can reduce an animal’s ability to fight disease, threaten fertility and cause drastic reductions in milk production. In extreme cases, heat stress kills – several US states have reported losses of more than 5,000 animals from a single heatwave.
No-one knows exactly how far away we are from the Malthusian scenario, but the strains on the planet’s ability to feed its inhabitants are already beginning to show.
As a result, there is general agreement throughout the agricultural industry that food production is in need of a drastic overhaul.
Simple adaptation
One way farmers have responded to this challenge has been to grow different crops. Food producers can change the types of crops they grow, the breeds of animals they farm and the fish they catch, or they can diversify into new products that are more tolerant of the changing climatic conditions.
Over the past 15 years, for instance, the British wine industry has seen consistent growth, producing a record-breaking 6.3 million bottles in 2014, while Tregothnan in Cornwall is home to the UK’s first tea plantation.
In the wetlands of Indonesia, meanwhile, proposals have been submitted to change the traditional rice, livestock and fishing-based food industry to the more profitable manufacture of organic fertilisers, biofuels and fermented food and drink. These efforts could provide a template for dealing with the unproductive agricultural conditions triggered by climate change.
Nevertheless, while crop adaptation can be part of the solution it can only go so far in placing the world’s food stocks on a more sustainable footing. New technologies will have a key role to play.
Agrochemical innovation
The agrochemical sector is likely to be central to efforts to ensure the world’s food supply remains abundant. Here, recent research has focused on making more efficient use of fertilisers.
Traditional nitrogen fertilisers –which revolutionised agriculture in the first half of the 20th century – have always tended to break down quickly when they get wet so that instead of promoting plant growth, much of the nitrogen that the fertiliser contains runs off uselessly as nitrates.
Now, researchers are focusing on slow-release products using nitrification inhibitors or polymer coatings to slow this breakdown, even in the wettest conditions, so that the fertilisers release a consistent supply of nitrogen.
“There’s a strong emphasis on minimising energy use in producing fertilisers – in recycling phosphorus that’s already in the system, for instance, rather than mining it from the ground,” explains Professor Keith Goulding, sustainable soil research fellow at Rothamsted Research, a UK-based agricultural research station. “Phosphorous is stripped out from waste water and sewage systems and reused as fertiliser on the soil.”
There have also been big advances in the production of organic bio-stimulants, which use naturally-occurring chemicals such as those in seaweed to promote leaf and root growth during the first 30 days of a crop’s life. Rather than directly providing a crop with nutrients or protecting it from pests and disease, these substances encourage strong growth to produce a healthy plant that is resistant to stress.
“There’s a growing realisation that the industry can’t just keep producing more and more crop-protection products. Pests and diseases are becoming increasingly resistant, and there are growing fears about contamination,” says David Booty, technical development manager for Omex, the international fertiliser and plant nutrient manufacturer.
“There is a lot more interest now – both commercially and from the scientific community – in looking at how we can continue to develop ways in which we can help plants to help themselves.”
21st century farming – the rise of precision agriculture
But technological progress aimed at making the agricultural industry more productive goes beyond developing hardier plants. Right through the food production process, from soil preparation to planting to harvesting, storage and transportation, new technologies will dramatically improve efficiency, enabling farmers to respond to the new challenges they face. This will go a long way towards reducing food waste – a scourge of the agricultural industry.
According to the World Bank, the amount of edible food lost due to poor crop management, storage, processing and transportation amounts to about USD750 billion a year, which is more that the GDP of Switzerland.
Aerial and satellite imagery can help. Increasingly such technology is used to monitor changes in plant mortality and the growth of invasive species so that farmers can move quickly and efficiently to tackle new threats.
Meanwhile, new generations of remote electronic sensors offer real-time information about the condition of crops, both in the field and in storage, enabling producers to apply water and fertilisers with precision as crops are growing, and monitor them as they await distribution.
Among the pioneers in this field is US firm Trimble, which has developed a range of software applications that can provide farmers with a detailed analysis of soil, weeds and pests.
Digital technology can also help in the breeding of livestock.
Software company Cojengo, for instance has developed a mobile app that allows farm workers to carry out on-the-spot medical examinations of their livestock, enabling them to diagnose and cure illnesses quickly and prevent diseases spreading from one animal to another.
Research is also already under way into the development of agricultural robots, or agbots, which will eventually offer complete robotic and automated processes such as ploughing, fruit picking and harvesting.
Already, GPS technology means it is possible to plough a field without a driver in the cab. Autonomous Tractor (autonomoustractor.com), a US robotics and engineering company, expects to have a cab-less robotic tractor within the next 12 months. The French company Wall-Ye (wall-ye.com) already has agricultural robots on the market, including a pruning robot for use in vineyards.
Sensors in farm and delivery vehicles will not only inform operators of likely faults and maintenance requirements, but also provide fully automated inter-vehicle communication so that delivery fleets can operate at maximum efficiency.
By maximising the return in suboptimal conditions and improving storage and transportation, these technologies will be an important part of the response to climate change and population growth.
-
The search for sustainable crop production
Tackling agricultural problems with scientific research lies at the heart of the approach taken by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), which administers the sustainable crop production research for the Sustainable Crop Production for International Development (SCPRID) programme.
More than 40 international research organisations are involved in the £16 million initiative, which is funded with aid from the UK government and by the Indian government, BBSRC and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
There are currently 11 separate projects in the SCPRID programme, each with at least one partner in the UK and one in a developing country. They aim to benefit the poor in developing countries, particularly smallholders, and to enhance the scientific capabilities of those nations.
The programme, which brings together 16 partner countries, aims to understand and counter the effects of drought, flooding, pests and diseases, and poor soils on major food crop production. Its work includes projects to control virus attacks on bean crops, develop drought-resistant rice and protect wheat from yellow and black rust disease, which can destroy an entire crop.
“The projects focus on both the abiotic and biotic stresses that food crops are subject to in the developing world – that’s problems such as drought and flooding, and also living threats to crops such as pests, weeds and diseases,” says Program Manager Amanda Read.
“They are currently about three years into a five-year programme, so they should be reporting their results sometime in 2018. Most of them are completing their field research now and moving into the analysis stage of the project so they’re all very much on target.”
This is the third of four programmes of research into agriculture in developing countries that the BBSRC has administered, and funded with the aid from donors. The second one, into combating infectious diseases in livestock, is expected to produce its final report towards the end of 2015.
