Experts from 60 countries have convened at a major agricultural conference in Sydney to discuss new ways to boost farming practices. World-renowned expert Professor Jean-Francois Soussana said that a warming climate would create more drought areas throughout Australia. Asia should expect more floods deleterious to agriculture.
The experts said that a bigger challenge was that of producing food to feed the growing world population. Soussana, in an interview with Radio Australia, said that many uncertainties remain as to exactly where droughts and floods will happen, but the flooding risk is higher in delta areas. He added that rice would be at higher risk from the warming climate when flowering.
Dr Jimmy Smith, head of the International Livestock Research Institute, said that the world will need to grow an additional one billion tonnes of cereal by 2050, and meat and dairy demand will also increase.
Smith said there is no definitive evidence that it is even possible to produce that much food, particularly as some say ecological limits are already being reached in some areas. The increases will probably need to come from productivity, he added.
Comments are closed.