Africa Can Feed the World . . .

The world now has seven billion people in it, but population growth won’t stop there. Demographers at the U.N. Population Fund said the big milestone came on Oct. 31, when a Philippine mother gave the world its seven billionth human life. In Kenya, the Daily Nation newspaper highlighted a Kenyan mother and her newborn, also born on the last day of October at Kenyatta National Hospital. That same hospital also delivered five other babies that day.

By the 2020s, the world’s population is expected to pass eight billion. By the 2040s, it will top nine billion. That’s like adding two Chinas between now and the middle of the century, as Robert L. Thompson of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs put it recently.

The greatest challenge of our time will be to figure out how we’re going to put food in all of these mouths. Over the next four decades, farmers everywhere will have to boost their production by a total of 70%.

… Full text: online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204190504577037701249563614.html

Keywords: agricultural technology, GM-crops, genetically modified crops, modified food