The world faces a permanent food crisis and global instability unless countries act now to feed a surging population by doubling agricultural output, a report drafted for ministers of the Group of Eight nations has warned.
The policy document, prepared by the G8's Italian presidency for the group's first ministerial meeting on agriculture and seen by the Financial Times, says “immediate interventions” are needed.
It warns that global agriculture production must double by 2050 for the world's fast-growing population to have enough to eat and to deal with the effects of climate change. Otherwise, the report says, the food crisis of the past two years in much of the world “will become structural in only a few decades”.