Towards a green economy 2 Challenges and opportunities

Today, agriculture stands at a crossroads. There are calls for changing the way food is produced and distributed if the poor and hungry are to be served better and if the world is to cope with a growing population and climate change. This section presents some major challenges and opportunities in transitioning to a green agriculture.

2.1 Challenges

Agriculture is facing a multitude of challenges on both the demand and supply side. On the demand side, these include food security, population growth, changing pattern of demand driven by increased income, and the growing pressure from biofuels. On the supply side, limited availability of land, water, mineral inputs and rural labour as well as the increasing vulnerability of agriculture to climate change and pre-harvest and post- harvest losses are the main challenges.

Increasing demand for food The most significant factors contributing to the increasing demand for food are the continued growth of the global population, especially in developing

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Figure 5: Distribution of population by age in more developed and less developed regions: 1950-2300 Source: UN ESA, World Population to 2300. Available at: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf

countries (Figure 5), and a rise in income levels in emerging economies. Demand for meat and processed food is rising with growing affluence. The current global population of more than 6 billion, of which 925 million are undernourished (FAO 2010), is forecast to reach 8.5- 9 billion by 2050, and per capita incomes are expected to rise by as much as a factor of 20 in India and 14 in China, respectively (Goldman Sachs 2007). Figure 6 shows that rural populations are increasingly migrating to urban and peri-urban areas in developing countries. This has consequences for food demand and field-to- table supply chains because the diets of urban dwellers show an increased proportion of processed foods. The prospect of the human population expanding by almost a third by 2050, combined with an expected rise in per capita demand for meat, dairy and vegetable products, requires geographically-focused efforts and a change in agricultural production patterns.

Competing demand from biofuels Growing interest in producing first-generation liquid biofuels to augment and replace petroleum-based transportation fuels is adding to the demand for starch, sugar and oilseed food commodities. For example,

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