Every minute of every day, more than 150 people are added to the world’s total population. The current 6.5 billion inhabitants are expected to increase to 9 billion by 2050. And according to a recent report by the Univ. of Wisconsin (sponsored by Deutsche Bank), the food and energy demands of those 9 billion souls will exceed our ability to satisfy them. The report, Investing in Agriculture, states: “A gap is emerging between agricultural production and demand, and this disconnect is expected to be amplified by climate change, increasing demand for biofuels, and a growing scarcity of water (for personal use and processing of food and biofuel products).”
While agricultural development has increased crop yields in the U.S. and Europe, those increases have not been translated into yield increases in developing nations, which have the highest food and biofuel demand, the greatest population growth, and the lowest investments and development. These disparities are not new, but they continue to widen.
The challenges for changing this situation are indeed grand. And while agricultural technologies can always be enhanced, much of what is needed to start the process already exists. What are needed are incentives for investors to create commercial farms where currently none exist. Somebody has to pay for the fertilizer, seed, equipment, irrigation systems and farmer training.
Support for these items by government and charitable organizations will not create a sustainable system—there’s no financial incentive to maintain a status quo. Just giving the appropriate technology to a region is also inefficient because most regional areas are agriculturally different from other areas and require unique solutions for crop development.A partnership between a country or region with an industrial entity could bring that investment. A biofuel production partnership, for example, could provide the investment to create the initial and ongoing infrastructure while creating downstream revenues. For many years, American and European oil firms have created partnerships around the world to develop oil fields in which both the host country and the oil firm profited. Obviously, some oil field partnerships went sour with problems like political nationalization, but overall they succeeded. This model can be adapted for food and biofuel products as well, as long as the profit incentives are similarly created.
Advanced technologies like automation, genetic breeding, site optimization, remote monitoring, and onsite analysis and processing could help to create productive, sustainable, and profitable food and biofuel farms. The scale and scope of these partnerships would likely need to be enhanced from previous mostly individually owned “plantation” schemes that focused only on crop products destined for foreign consumption. The output of these partnerships would need to be focused on supporting both the local needs for food and fuel along with creating a continuing revenue stream for the investor. Both parties need to benefit.
The resulting scheme creates local economic growth, self-dependency, the avoidance of increased government deficits and the depressing environment of living on “the dole.” It also enhances the technical capabilities (and growth) of those investors by creating an ever-increasing market for enhanced biological-based products that are individually developed for specific geographical and climatological environments.