What about the development and changes in agriculture in the world?

Question

What about the development and changes in agriculture in the world?

Answer 1

They need to get more and more advanced to start feeding this growing population.  Soft commodity prices all over the place but essentially probably gonna keep going up due to demand dynamics in the future.

Answer 2

Firstly an economist called Thomas Malthus predicted in the 18th and 19th centuries that there would be mass starvation in the world because he realised that as populations grew geometrically, food production grew only arithmetically. So food production grows by 1,2,3,4,5 etc, whilst population grows by 1,2,4,8,16 etc meaning there would be less food to go round.

     However this has not come true as advances in technology have meant food production has become more productive and efficient and has kept pace with population growth. Therefore GM foods should be more widely adopted, especially in Europe in order to boost crop yields and reduce the chances of crop failures.

      Secondly many Western economies choose to heavily subsidise agriculture eg. the EU's CAP (Common Agricultural Policy). This means worldwide food prices are kept artificially high. If the Western economies scrapped these and gave third world farmers a chance to compete in the global economy, not only would worldwide food prices fall, but it could help alleviate poverty and starvation in Africa (which by the way could also be helped by GM crops).