18 April 2007The ScotsmanEthan McNern
Global grain yields must rise sharply over the next 50 years to avoid food shortages as an increasingly rich population competes with biofuels for scarce resources, the head of the Scottish Agricultural College has said.
Despite growth in organic farming in some parts of Europe, Professor Bill McKelvey said that while such niche output had a role in the food supply, there was a need to intensify aspects of agriculture to avoid shortages in the future. He said growing affluence in countries like China and India as well as desertification due to climate change would increase strain on the world's ability to feed itself, but the most pressing threat came from the biofuel revolution.
"We are going to see increasing competition between food and fuel," Prof McKelvey told a news conference.
He said rising corn usage in US ethanol production was already helping to tighten world grain stocks, which have dropped from 100 to 40 days' worth of supply in the past six years.
And as the biofuel sector took up an increasing portion of arable production elsewhere, yield increases would be needed as the amount of unused suitable land was limited.
He noted the European Commission has set a 5.75 per cent target of biofuel incorporation in fuels by 2010, encouraging new rapeseed-derived biodiesel and sugar/grain-derived ethanol plants to be built across the EU.
Current output was well short of targets.
"Grain yields have risen fourfold over the last 50 years and we'll have to see more of the same over the next 50," he said.
And this would probably mean a higher acceptance of new genetically-modified (GM) crop strains in Europe in order to achieve the necessary yield increases.
"The higher yields could come from traditional plant breeding, but they could also include GM. We will have to face up to the GM issue," he said.
