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Press release.
04/06/2008
How can 9 billion people be fed sustainably in 2050?
Meeting of 3 June 2008
Partners from 50 countries joined a meeting held on 3 June 2008, at the initiative of INRA and CIRAD, to shed light on the concerns and priorities of global agricultural research. Three leading approaches emerged:
- identifying common research questions using foresight studies,
- offering stakeholders venues for exchanging information, and common tools to facilitate information dissemination, intellectual property management, and innovation,
- promoting training and knowledge transfer, supporting agricultural research in the South, and sustaining the continuum of exchanges in know-how between the North and South.
During the meeting, initial results from the Agrimonde foresight study showed that it was possible to meet the challenge of feeding 9 billion people sustainably in 2050, under certain conditions. The meeting made it possible to stress the need for financial and intellectual investment in agriculture. Conclusions from the discussion were then transferred to the FAO in Rome to contribute to the work in progress.
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As world leaders meet this week in Rome for a global summit on food security, INRA and CIRAD brought together international partners from all spheres - institutions, research and development bodies, socio-economic players - to help mobilise the international scientific community and all stakeholders to act on the priorities of agricultural research.
Discussions were organised around two challenges:
- the process of innovation, which requires knowledge of living beings, environments, techniques, and socio-economic aspects,
- the integration of different scientific disciplines, and the multiple objectives of agriculture, stakeholders, space and time scales, to design and implement sustainable food and agricultural systems.
The main conclusions of the meeting, held under the patronage of the FAO, were addressed to Rome by Patrice Debré and Gérard Matheron, CIRAD Chair and Director-General, respectively, and Marion Guillou, INRA President and Director General. They included proposals for approaches that would encourage global agricultural research to seek innovations for sustainable and cooperative agriculture in an efficient way.
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To learn more:
>> click here to download the meeting summaries
>> The entire meeting was filmed. Click here to watch the meeting online
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The INRA-CIRAD Agrimonde foresight study
The first results from the Agrimonde foresight study, on the future of the global agricultural and food system in 2050, were presented at the meeting. They found that it was possible to meet the challenge of feeding 9 billion people in 2050 under several conditions:
- reducing losses at all levels: field, storage, transport, processing, distribution, consumption; countering food consumption trends, especially with regard to the association between higher income and increased consumption .
- investing in research, research and development, and training, in order to increase yields, and designing and distributing agricultural production systems that are compatible with the preservation of ecosystems and can resist climate change,
- making adequate investments in infrastructure and regulation of trade, which will remain indispensable in areas that continue to suffer food shortages.
>> See the Agrimonde results
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Written by :
INRA press service, phone: +33 (0)1 42 75 91 69
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