Institute of Agriculture

Every human is a net consumer of food. Maintaining the worlds food supply is critical to human existence.

• About 800 million people are undernourished globally.
• World population is projected to increase to 9 billion by the mid 21st century. Just to keep pace, food production must increase by over 50 per cent.
• This increase in food production has to come from shrinking natural resources, particularly land and water.
• World economic growth will see rapidly changing food preferences and, increasingly demanding standards of food quality.
• Degradation of agricultural lands, urban encroachment and competing uses of scarce resources for agriculture is increasing the cost of production. It will require farmers to continue to be more innovative and improve management practices.
• Escalating crude oil prices have tripled fertilizer, other inputs, transportation and shipping costs.
• Climate change is expected to have an increasing impact on the world's agriculture and natural resources. Australia, already the world's driest inhabited continent, is predicted to get drier in the southern agricultural regions, with an added complication of increased climate variability.
• World population and the industrialising economies are rapidly increasing their demands on agriculture to produce food, fibre, fuel and industrial raw materials.
• World population is increasing, fuelling a corresponding increase in demand for food. At the same time, the worlds supply of agricultural land and water are decreasing under the pressures of climate change, urbanisation and human-induced degradation.

The challenge, both internationally and for Australia, is to meet society's needs for food, fibre and fuel in ways that can be sustained into the future economically, environmentally and socially.