The way we human beings behave can be strange. For at least 30 years I used to give talks which included a slide showing how population increase was reducing the land available to feed an individual, pointing out that unless we changed something, at some point we would run the risk of not being able to feed everyone on the planet. Every few years I would update it, and while the trends continued as predicted, no one seemed to want to pay any attention. Historic stocks were depleted, the rich ate more, and more people fell into hunger.
It was really only in 2008, when food prices rose, that it caught the attention of policy-makers and the general public. This resulted in detailed analyses of the challenge such as the United Kingdom Foresight Team, and scientists pointing out that years of declining funding for agriculture, even in countries with a large agro-economy such as the United States, needed to be reversed if the challenges were to be overcome.
See full Article: http://forumblog.org/2013/03/will-biotechnology-provide-food-security/
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