UK should lead on tackling food shortages

The UK should pour £2bn into research on genetically modified crops to help avoid world hunger, a panel of top scientists has said. GM techniques will be needed to boost food production, help crops survive climate change and feed the rising world population, Scientists at the Royal Society said yesterday. Because of the growing population, food production will have to go up by about 50% in 40 years, the influential panel said, stressing that the UK can lead the research needed.

They say people have become careless about food supplies because the amount of crops produced has gone up. However the report said GM was not the only answer, and that measures to improve crop management, such as improved irrigation, were needed. ''We have to look at all the options that we have,” said Professor Sir David Baulcombe, a plant scientist at the University of Cambridge who chaired the study. The Society's report, Reaping the Benefits: Science and the Sustainable Intensification of Global Agriculture, concludes that science has to have a central role if the food supply is to be maintained in 2050, when the world population may have reached nine billion. "We need to take action now to stave off food shortages,” said Prof Sir Baulcombe. “If we wait even five to 10 years, it may be too late. Biological science has progressed in leaps and bounds in the last decade and UK scientists have been at the head of the pack when it comes to topics related to food crops. In the UK we have the potential to come up with viable scientific solutions for feeding a growing population and we have a responsibility to realise this potential. There's a very clear need for policy action and publicly funded science to make sure this happens."

In the 50s and 60s, the so-called Green Revolution created high-yielding varieties of crops such as rice and maize and reduced hunger and improved food security, the report said. But now a new push is needed quickly. The changing diets of people around the world, the impact of climate change and growing shortage of water and land mean that it will be harder to increase food production with the global population expected to rise by three billion in 2050. The number of people going hungry across the world reached one billion, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation said in June - "the first time in history" there had been so many. Although it said rising unemployment and lower incomes were to blame for recent increases in the number of hungry people, investment in science to increase the supply of food was also needed.The G8 group of nations vowed earlier this year to spend £12bn improving food security for the world’s poorest countries.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children