In a new book, The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It, Professor Julian Cribb argues a catastrophic global food shortage will hit by mid-century. His predictions paint a glum picture that could threaten the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
Populations will grow to 9.2 billion by 2050 and in turn will require more than double today’s global food requirements. Combine this with unpredictable extreme weather patterns, droughts, crop failures, food riots and war. Growing shortages of water and less productive land to yield crops will further hinder the world's future food production.
New maps show that the Earth is rapidly running out of fertile land. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison combined satellite land cover images with agricultural census data from every country in the world to create detailed maps of global land use. The maps reveal that more than one third of the world's land is being used to grow crops or graze cattle. |
