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Related: About this forumStudy: Maximizing grain yields won't meet future African needs
http://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/study-maximizing-grain-yields-wont-meet-future-african-needs/[font face=Serif]December 12, 2016
[font size=5]Study: Maximizing grain yields won't meet future African needs[/font]
by Scott Schrage | University Communication
[font size=4]Maximizing cereal crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa would still fail to meet the regions skyrocketing grain demand by 2050, according to a new study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Wageningen University and multiple African institutions.[/font]
[font size=3]Sub-Saharan Africa produces about 80 percent of the grain it now consumes. But that consumption could triple if its population rises an expected 250 percent by 2050. Presently, cereal crops account for about half of sub-Saharan Africas food and farmland.
Even if sub-Saharan yields continue rising at the rate they have over the last quarter-century, the regions existing farmland would still produce only between a third and half of the grain needed in 2050, researchers reported Dec. 12 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The status quo is simply not acceptable, said co-author Kenneth Cassman, professor emeritus at Nebraska and fellow of the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute. Complacency is the enemy. This is a clarion call for action.
To maintain even 80 percent of its self-sufficiency in 2050, sub-Saharan Africa must reach the realistic yield thresholds of corn, millet, rice, sorghum and wheat, the study found. The region currently grows about a quarter of the cereal crops it could by optimizing its plant and soil management, the authors said. Closing this gap would require what the study called a large, abrupt acceleration in yield trajectories similar to the Green Revolution that transformed North American, European and Asian agriculture in the mid-20th century.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1610359113
[font size=5]Study: Maximizing grain yields won't meet future African needs[/font]
by Scott Schrage | University Communication
[font size=4]Maximizing cereal crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa would still fail to meet the regions skyrocketing grain demand by 2050, according to a new study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Wageningen University and multiple African institutions.[/font]
[font size=3]Sub-Saharan Africa produces about 80 percent of the grain it now consumes. But that consumption could triple if its population rises an expected 250 percent by 2050. Presently, cereal crops account for about half of sub-Saharan Africas food and farmland.
Even if sub-Saharan yields continue rising at the rate they have over the last quarter-century, the regions existing farmland would still produce only between a third and half of the grain needed in 2050, researchers reported Dec. 12 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The status quo is simply not acceptable, said co-author Kenneth Cassman, professor emeritus at Nebraska and fellow of the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute. Complacency is the enemy. This is a clarion call for action.
To maintain even 80 percent of its self-sufficiency in 2050, sub-Saharan Africa must reach the realistic yield thresholds of corn, millet, rice, sorghum and wheat, the study found. The region currently grows about a quarter of the cereal crops it could by optimizing its plant and soil management, the authors said. Closing this gap would require what the study called a large, abrupt acceleration in yield trajectories similar to the Green Revolution that transformed North American, European and Asian agriculture in the mid-20th century.
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Study: Maximizing grain yields won't meet future African needs (Original Post)
OKIsItJustMe
Dec 2016
OP
An arithmetic increase can't keep up with a geometric increase. Who knew. (n/t)
Jim Lane
Dec 2016
#1
Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)1. An arithmetic increase can't keep up with a geometric increase. Who knew. (n/t)
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)2. I think I've heard that somewhere before...
Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)3. That tells me you're probably not a policymaker. Apparently few or none of them have heard it. (nt)
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)4. I've been lectured before that Malthusianism makes terrible policy.
We need to stay ahead of the growth curve, you know! At all cost. At ALL cost!
Well the finger-waggers got one thing right - the cost will be ALL...