Advances In Fertilizer Technology Can Help Feed The World

Yesterday, Chris Mayer talked about the seventh wonder of the United States: our crumbling Interstate Highway System. He also gave you an odd way to play it: don’t invest in the corporate giants. That’s 20th century. Rather, invest in a mix of local producers of goods and services — the businesses not reliant on unjustifiable transportation costs.

Ian Wyatt submits: The United Nations predicts that the world's population will reach 9 billion people by 2050. That's an increase of 33% over the world population right now.

By Michael T. Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of The Race for What’s Left. Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the U.S. intelligence community, the earth is already shifting under you.  Whether you know it or not, you’re on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort humanity has never before experienced.

(Joe Houghtaling)

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s recent council meeting in Rome comes at a time when innovators in food science are grappling with paradoxical challenges — a global obesity epidemic and persistent threats of food scarcity.  

There used to be a time when wheat, corn and rice yields increased by 5% and even 10% a year. That was at the height of the Green Revolution, which covered the 1960s to 1980s. In those days food production easily outstripped the growth in the global population. In the forty-year stretch between 1960 and 2000, that population doubled to 6 billion. The good news is that the rate of growth has dropped; by mid century there is likely to be 9 billion to 10 billion people on the planet: roughly a 40% to 50% increase in size.