By the year 2050, it is estimated that farmers will have to produce as much as 70 percent more food to keep up with population growth — that means more than a billion tons more of cereals every year and at least 200 million tons of meat a year just to keep everyone fed.
More about food production and global population growth:
- The global population is expected to grow by more than 2 billion people between 2010 and 2050 — that's almost double the population of China.
- Almost 90 percent of this new food will have to come from increased yields on currently farmed land, because arable land is becoming increasingly limited.
- The region with the fastest population growth is sub-Saharan Africa, which, along with the Caribbean, is where most of the expansion in arable land is expected to occur.