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(FB084) 
March 30, 2010
The Shape of Tomorrow's FarmingDennis T. Avery Tomorrow’s farming will look like today’s, only more so. Crop and livestock yields per acre must triple again to protect wildlife habitat. Biotechnology will be increasingly vital. Confinement feeding will be even more important, to leave room for wildlife. Organic will prove to be a fad, as will locovores and vegetarians. Activists will be less credible than over the past 50 years. The world’s farmers are facing the biggest challenge in their history. Expect more than 8 billion humans by 2050, with 7 billion of them affluent—compared with only 1.5 billion affluent today; trade and technology are powerful forces for increased wealth. Expect also a continuing surge in the number of companion cats and dogs, none of them vegetarian.
World food production must double by 2050, and production of meat and milk will more than double. Children need the key micronutrients of livestock products to prevent such diseases as pellagra and blindness due to severe Vitamin A deficiency. Their cognitive development also seems to benefit from high-quality protein.
Farming intensity must triple on the best land, in order to protect the poorer land which houses three-fourths of the wild species. Good farmland will become even more important, as one of the scarcest resources.
Most of the increased farm output will and must come from the best-quality land, which maximizes yields and minimizes land requirements per pound of food. It also minimizes soil erosion, humanity’s most ancient and implacable enemy.
is the director of the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute. He grew up on a Michigan dairy farm and received degrees from Michigan State and the University of Wisconsin. He won "outstanding performance" awards from three different U.S. government agencies, and received the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement in 1983 while working for the U.S. State Department. He has been a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute since 1989. A popular speaker, he also writes a weekly column on current environmental and global warming issues. His writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Miami Herald, Seattle Times, Des Moines Register, and dozens of other newspapers and websites. He has also been featured in Fortune, Forbes, The National Journal and in The Atlantic Monthly. |
Dennis T. Avery 
