New Report Urges Changing Course to Feed the World in 2050

The Global Development and Environment (GDAE) Institute at Tufts University has published a Working Paper together with ActionAid's report "Rising to the Challenge: Changing Course to Feed the World in 2050." Timothy Wise, director of the Research and Policy Program at Tufts University's Global Development and Environment Institute, in his paper "Can We Feed the World in 2050?" finds that many public pronouncements that call for doubling the world's food production are based on outdated or flawed forecasting. More reliable estimates of current supply, productivity, and demand trends suggest a need to increase agricultural production by 60 percent over the 2005-2007 levels by 2050, which is a far cry from previous calls of doubling food production.

According to Wise, an increasing share of the world's agricultural production goes not to food or feed but to biofuels. He finds that most economic forecasting fails to adequately guide decisions regarding several key variables including biofuels expansion, inadequate and poorly targeted agricultural investment, food wastage and spoilage, and climate change.

For more details about this report, read the news release at: http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/policy_research/FeedWorld2050.html. The GDAE working paper can be downloaded at: http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/wp/13-04WiseFeedWorld2050.pdf. The ActionAid report is available at: http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/ActionAid_rising_to_challenge.pdf.