By 2060, Humanity Will Need to Produce Seventy Percent More Food. Here’s What We Need To Solve First

Being one of the significant challenges facing humanity in the present day as we look towards the future, food supply and agriculture are ripe to be transformed by the continuous innovations and progress in artificial intelligence to allow us to achieve the ambitious goal of producing seventy percent more food than today [1].

In this first instalment of a three-part series, we’ll take a deep dive into the problems being faced by the agriculture industry in the present day — and a sneak peek at some of the groundbreaking solutions to these modern-day challenges.

Is this the right place to be putting resources?

Agriculture isn’t a small industry by any means — nor is it inconsequential. Apart from employing 1.3 billion people worldwide, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals goal of zero hunger by 2030 will be improbable without significantly improved agricultural output and efficiency across the globe. [2]

As much as progress has occurred in agricultural technologies in the recent past, there remains much untapped potential for improvements and disruption. In this post, we’ll take a deep dive into those problems.

Effective Allocation of resources

Agriculture is notorious for not being frugal in its usage of precious resources like water — approximately 70% of all water usage worldwide is due to it, and of that 60% is wasted. [3] As water becomes increasingly more valuable, particularly its fresh variant, agriculture sees a need to explore new avenues for efficient water use as much as, if not more than, any other sector.

Water is not the only resource whose usage leaves room to be optimised. Chemicals and pesticides are in many cases indiscriminately used in a non-data driven manner for optimising when and where to use them, thus leading to much waste. Every year in the US alone, a billion pounds of pesticide are used, and many water supplies globally are contaminated with pesticides and other agricultural products [4]. Put together, and agriculture emerges as a significant factor in water pollution.

A shrinking and ageing labour force

The agricultural labour force is both shrinking and ageing, as finding someone or something to run such farms is becoming more difficult. The average Indian farmer is 51 years old; the average American one is 58 [5]. A rapidly increasing population demands increasing agricultural output, but the farmers who supply that food are ageing, which bids poorly for the workforce’s future.
The percentage of the population employed as part of the agricultural workforce is also shrinking — almost 40% of the working population in 2000 was employed in agriculture; in 2020, that figure is only 26%, according to an ILO estimate[6]. Youth worldwide seem to be progressively less interested in agriculture as other fields of work are becoming increasingly popular.

External factors

Climatic and weather-related events

Climate and weather-related events can ravage farmers. According to an FAO report, their global annual average economic damage to agriculture between 2004 to 2014 was 100 billion USD. Farmers bear the brunt of such events: floods, storms, droughts, storms, hurricanes, cyclones, or wildfires. In particular, crops are most affected by floods and storms. [7,8]

Pest Control and Crop Disease

Globally, pests and crop disease reduce the output of five major food crops by 10 to 40 percent. [9] Over millennia, such pathogens and pests have evolved along with human crops to be more effective. Invasive insects alone cost $70 billion a year worldwide [10]. Put together with crop diseases, they pose a notable threat to the global food supply, environment, and human health in larger part due to the agricultural sector’s inability to combat them [11].

Financial Burdens

Several farmers worldwide cannot procure financing for near-necessary purchases such as farm inputs and harvesting crops, particularly in developing countries such as Kenya. Many farmers are also burdened by significant debt if they can procure loans at all [12]. Furthermore, several farmers do not keep financial records, making obtaining historical performance of their farms and financial projections difficult. [13]

What’s Next?

These are just some of the several challenges faced by the increasingly vital agricultural sector. In the following post, we’ll look at some possible solutions to the issues described here — and more!

References

1. University, American, and Columbia University. n.d. “We Need to Produce 70% More Food in Next 40 Years.” Treehugger. Accessed November 28, 2020. https://www.treehugger.com/we-need-to-produce-more-food-in-next-years-4849113.
2. “AI in Agriculture: Solutions to Global Challenges.” n.d. AI in Agriculture: Solutions to Global Challenges. Accessed November 28, 2020. https://www.rebellionresearch.com/blog/ai-in-agriculture-solutions-to-global-challenges.
3. “Smart Farms? How AI Can Solve Water Wastage | Earth.org — Past | Present | Future.” 2019. Earth.org — Past | Present | Future. Earth.org. April 10, 2019. https://earth.org/smart-farms-how-ai-can-solve-water-wastage- /.
4. Zanolli, Lauren. 2019. “Pesticides Explained: The Toxic Chemicals in up to 70% of Produce.” The Guardian. The Guardian. May 29, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/29/pesticides-everyday-products-toxics-guide.
5. “Farmers Ageing, New Generation Disinterested: Who Will Grow Our Food?” n.d. Www.Downtoearth.org.In. Accessed November 28, 2020. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/agriculture/farmers-ageing-new-generation-disinterested-who-will-grow-our-food--65800.
6. “Employment in Agriculture (% of Total Employment) (Modeled ILO Estimate) | Data.” 2018. Worldbank.org. 2018. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS.
7. “Damage and Losses from Climate-Related Disasters in Agricultural Sectors.” n.d. http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6486e.pdf.
8. “Damage and Losses from Climate-Related Disasters in Agricultural Sectors.” — — — . n.d. http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6486e.pdf.
9. facebook.com/agincalifornia. 2019. “Pests and Diseases Cause Worldwide Damage to Crops.” California Agriculture News | California Agriculture. February 11, 2019. https://californiaagtoday.com/pests-diseases-cause-worldwide-damage-crops/.
10. Bradshaw, Corey J. A., Boris Leroy, Céline Bellard, David Roiz, Céline Albert, Alice Fournier, Morgane Barbet-Massin, Jean-Michel Salles, Frédéric Simard, and Franck Courchamp. 2016. “Massive yet Grossly Underestimated Global Costs of Invasive Insects.” Nature Communications 7 (1). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12986.
11. “Pest Insects.” n.d. Www.Agric.Wa.Gov.Au. https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/pests-weeds-diseases/pests/pest-insects.
12. Subramanian, R., and Sunil Shivananjappa. 2017. “Investigation on the Problems Faced by the Farmers in Obtaining and Repayment of Agricultural Credit in Karaikal District, India.” International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences 6 (11): 3966–71. https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2017.611.463.
13. Craig, Hannah. n.d. “Helping Farmers Overcome Financial Challenges.” CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture. https://bigdata.cgiar.org/blog-post/helping-farmers-overcome-financial-challenges/.

Arjun Sharma is a Student Ambassador in the Inspirit AI Student Ambassadors Program. Inspirit AI is a pre-collegiate enrichment program that exposes curious high school students globally to AI through live online classes. Learn more at https://www.inspiritai.com/.