Research needed to head off global food crisis: expert

Spending on research and development for agricultural systems needs to double as the world is entering an agricultural crisis with global food shortages, rising food prices and growing numbers of displaced people, according to a leading New Zealand agriculture expert.

The inevitable crisis stemmed from the confluence of three key factors: ever increasing energy demands, increasingly limited water resources, and climate change, said Tony Bywater, Lincoln University Professor of Agricultural Systems.

Food prices were already rising as was the number of displaced people, meaning large-scale global famine -- a trigger of global unrest -- was inevitable, Bywater said in a statement Thursday.

The global population was expected to reach 11 billion by 2100, and meeting rising demand for particular foods, such as meat products, was hampered by issues such as climate change, where a 1 percent rise in global temperature was estimated to equate to a 10 percent decrease in food production.

"The farmer's challenge boils down to doubling food production with far less available land, eventually no fossil fuels, and scarce or very costly fertilizers and all under conditions of increased drought and greater climatic variability," said Bywater.

As well as looking at ways to reduce food wastage and change diets, researchers needed to "reinvent food" through such ways as bio-agricultures and harnessing technologies that allowed food to be grown in urban spaces, as well as devoting more resources to developing high-efficiency, low-input eco-farming systems.

"Across Western countries, only 1.8 percent of research and development spending goes into agriculture," said Bywater.

Moreover, aid specifically targeted at food production has dropped significantly over the years, he added.

Spending on military weaponry was almost 400 times the amount spent every year on agricultural research, highlighting the importance of seeing "food research as a kind of defense spending. "

While New Zealand would avoid some of the worst effects of the crisis, it would still be affected by high food prices and pressures from displaced people.