In 1965 the world produced about a million tonnes of cereal, which went a long way towards feeding the then world population of about 3.3 billion. By 2010 the population had doubled to 6.7 billion but the amount of land harvested remained the same. However, this same acreage of land was now producing over two million tonnes of cereal. How come?
All sorts of things have changed in agriculture since 1965 – more mechanisation, better pesticides, selective breeding of higher yield cereals, but the biggest single difference between 1965 and now is the intensive use of nitrogen based fertiliser. And where does this come from? Fossil fuels.
It’s predicted that the world population will peak out at around 9 billion in about 2050. In order to feed this many people we’ll need a lot more fossil fuel based fertiliser. If this isn’t available we really only have two choices. One is to return to organic, fertiliser free farming. As organic farming produces around half the yield of intensively fertilised farming, we’d need to double the amount of land available. Alternatively, we could make more use of genetically modified crops to produce higher yields with less fertiliser. Whichever way you look at it, food is a fossil fuel problem.