Planning and investment in global agriculture will become critically important in the coming years, with the world's caloric needs expected to soar by 50 percent in the next 40 years, according to a report produced by Deutsche Bank, one of the world's leading global investment banks, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. The report noted that "agricultural research and technological development in the United States and Europe have increased notably in the last decade, but those advances have not translated into increased production on a global scale."

"First we have to improve yield," says David Zaks, a co-author of the report and a researcher at the Nelson Institute. "Next, we have to bring in more land in agriculture while considering the environmental implications, and then we have to look at technology." The authors of the report identified several strategies to increase global agricultural productions in sustainable ways. These include:

• Improvements in irrigation, fertilization and agricultural equipment using technologies,
• Investing in "farmer competence" to take full advantage of new technologies through education and extension services,
• Increasing the amount of land under cultivation without expanding to forested lands, and
• Intensifying yield using new technologies, including genetically modified crops.

Read the original story at http://www.news.wisc.edu/16856 The report is available for download at http://www.dbcca.com/dbcca/EN/_media/Investing_in_Agriculture_June_25_2009.pdf .