Developing a 21st Century View of Agriculture and the Environment

Abstract

Both poverty and malnutrition are serious problems in the world and both are interrelated. Food security for the poor depends on an adequate supply of food and/or the ability to purchase food. Unfortunately in the world today, more than 3.7 billion people are malnourished because of shortages of calories, protein, several vitamins, iron and iodine (World Health Organization, 2005; Rhodes, 2005). People can die because of shortage of any one of these nutrients or a combination of them. The total of 3.7 billion malnourished people is the largest number ever in history. In the world today, there are more than 6.5 billion humans (PRB, 2006). Based on current rates of increase, the world population is projected to double to more than 13 billion in about 58 years (PRB, 2006). At a time when the world population continues to expand at a rate of 1.2% per year, adding more than a quarter million people daily, providing adequate food becomes an increasingly difficult problem. Conceivably, the numbers of the malnourished will reach 5 billion in a few decades. Reports from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the US Department of Agriculture, as well as numerous other international organizations, further confirm the serious nature of the global food supply. For example, the per capita availability of world cereal grains, which make up 80% of the world's food supply, has been declining for more than two decades. This decline is taking place despite all the current agricultural and biotechnological facilities available. Malnourished people are more susceptible to numerous diseases, like malaria, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis and AIDS. The World Health Organization reports that there are more than 2.4 billion people infected with malaria, 2 billion infected with tuberculosis, 600 million infected with schistosomiasis and 40 million infected with AIDS (Pimentel et al., 2004). In this chapter, we will examine the need to increase and make more rational food production, to conserve natural resources, to reduce food (crop) losses to pests, to consider the possibility and benefits of converting annual grains into perennial grains and to consider new crops and innovative minilivestock.

Sustainable Development and Equity

“…Low development is widely understood to contribute to high population growth, which declines only after the appearance of widespread access to key developmental needs such as perinatal and maternal healthcare, and female education and empowerment. Conversely, high population growth is widely regarded as an obstacle to SD because it tends to make efforts such as the provision of clean drinking water and agricultural goods and the expansion of health services and school enrollment rates difficult (Dyson, 2006;Potts, 2007;Pimentel and Paoletti, 2009).…”