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The current food crisis comes as a rude awakening to many, shaking up priorities on a collective scale. Emergency aid from international solidarity is needed today, but action must be taken to address the looming challenge of sustainable food supply. Right now, the poorest face food shortages but the overall supply is adequate. In 2050, however, food supply may not be enough if we do not have the agricultural production capacity needed to feed 9 billion men and women.
INRA's 2020 projections show that global agriculture can meet this demand for food, as well as rational energy requirements, by increasing yields to the same extent as that achieved over the past twenty years, and expanding cultivated land surface by 5 to 10%. Such a scenario is within our reach on three conditions: pursuing and renewing material and intellectual investments in the sector in all continents; using incentives to promote ecologically-sustainable practices; and disseminating the innovations and experiences acquired.
The face of agriculture in 2050 will be different. It will still be intensive, but in a different way - rich in biological, technical and economic knowledge and know-how; suited to the possibilities of each milieu; and mobilising the practices of local stakeholders. Agricultural research must prepare a range of solutions for this multifaceted version of agriculture. All disciplines must be mobilised on all levels, from molecular biology to ecology, from gene to plant, from plant to the land itself.
But achieving mobilisation and investments of this kind entails dissuading financial speculation on food, preventing risks to plant, animal and human health, providing protection in case of destructive effects tied to climate change, and encouraging the management of natural resources. This falls under public policy aimed at stabilisation and regulation.
In its time, French agriculture was able to address the challenge of meeting the food requirements of our fellow citizens, and French agricultural research played a crucial role in that case. Today's food, environmental and social challenges are in the global realm. Strides made in agriculture must be deployed worldwide, and international agricultural research must serve this goal. The recent work accomplished by sixty countries on the subject of agricultural revival for the Millennium Development Goals goes in this direction.
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