Investment Requirements Under New Demands on World Agriculture: feeding the world with bioenergy and climate change

Investment Requirements Under New Demands on World Agriculture: feeding the world with bioenergy and climate change

Siwa Msangi, Simla Tokgoz, Miroslav Batka and Mark Rosegrant

Year of publication 2009

Product type Document

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) In this paper, we explore the sectoral spending that is needed to sustain global agricultural food production at the level needed to feed the world to 2050. We examine the key sectors most closely associated with agricultural performance and human well-being improvement, and see how these sectoral needs change under the additional challenge of the future climate change. The results of our analysis reveal a significant level of additional spending needed for key regions like sub-Saharan A frica and South Asia, which hold most of the world’s poor and undernourished, and which will be hard-hit by climate change. The role of irrigation becomes important for regions like Africa, which heavily depend on rainfed agricultural production. The need for roads is also crucial as a means for increasing the market access of producers and maintaining a vigorous level of performance within agriculture and other sectors. We discuss the role of the international agricultural research syst em in terms of providing global public goods, in the form of research innovations that benefit the global food system through both higher levels of availability, under increasing environmental and socio-economic stress, and through lower food prices.

Language English

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