By Bruce Cochrane.
The Director of Sustainable Food with the World Wildlife Fund is encouraging farmers in North America and Europe to share with those in the rest of the world their methods for improving agricultural sustainability.
"Feeding the Planet-Animal Protein Challenges" was discussed last week as part of the 2017 Banff Pork Seminar.
Sandra Vijn, the Director of Sustainable Food with the World Wildlife Fund, notes by 2050 we'll have over nine billion people, with a growing middle class, so we'll need to produce more food on the current amount of land with less resources.
Sandra Vijn-World Wildlife Fund:
People will have more money to spend, in particular in developing countries and people are more interested in having more of a western diet style, so more meat and more animal protein consumption, and that will mean that more food needs to be produced for these people and we don't have a lot of land left to produce more food.
So we really need to look at how can we produce more food on the current amount of land with less resources because agriculture already uses 70 percent of water globally, we use 40 percent of all the land and we also emit a lot of greenhouse gas emissions and use a lot of energy.
Animal production in North America and in Europe has become very efficient and productive.
When you look at the last four to five decades more animal proteins have been produced on less land using less water with more output, less greenhouse gas emissions so there is a strong trend and continuous improvement with that regard.
But the rest of the developing world needs your help in understanding how they can become more efficient and more productive and learn from how you've done it.
Vijn encourages farmers to work with all stakeholders, including environmental groups, consumer groups and policy makers to make them aware of what's happening on the farm and why certain decisions are made so people can better understand how farming works.
Source: Farmscape