KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The world's farmers will need to double grain yields by 2030 to meet world food demand, but that's not an impossible task even for the highly developed U.S. food industry, experts said Tuesday at a conference on global agriculture.
"It's certainly within the historical norms," said David Fischhoff, vice president for technology at Monsanto Co., a panelist at a symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City that was attended by about 200 people.
Fischhoff said farmers have doubled grain yields since the 1970s, achieving an average corn crop of about 150 bushels per acre. That will need to reach 300 bushels within 20 years.
Meeting that goal will require a combination of factors, he said, including:
» Plant breeding that, among other things, will let farmers not only raise more grain but also increase the rate of that increase from year to year. Genetic improvements can double that rate, he said. "We're well on our way to achieving that goal."
» Improved farming practices, such as planting more corn stalks per acre and more precisely matching hybrid varieties to soil. Typical fields now hold about 30,000 corn plants per acre; that could be increased to at least 40,000.
» Advances in biotechnology that go beyond plants that tolerate herbicides or repel certain insects. "This is really just the beginning of this era."
A video message from Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said meeting food demand has implications beyond hunger.
"A well-fed world is a much safer and stable place," Roberts said. "That in turn leads to economic stability, economic growth and peace." Hungry people, by contrast, can move toward "discontent, instability and, yes, even extremism."
Food demand is increasing because of a growing world population and improvements in the standard of living of people in developing countries, said Joseph Glauber, chief economist for the U.S. Agriculture Department.
Glauber projected that U.S. meat exports, for example, will continue to increase as people in developing countries add more beef and pork to their diets. Between 1960 and 1969, he said, U.S. farmers exported 1 percent of their beef and 3.35 percent of their pork.
That has grown to 11.8 percent of beef and 29.1 percent of pork in the latest decade, and Glauber expects that to increase to 10 percent for beef and 22 percent for pork.
"We're exporting a much, much higher-quality product," he said.
China's economic growth is pushing much of that increase and shows little sign of letting up, he said, and the weak U.S. dollar in relation to other currencies has made U.S. crops cheaper on world markets. China buys about 60 percent of the world's soybean exports.
Farm exports resulted in a $44 billion trade surplus in 2010-11, Glauber said, which is a record dollar amount and the second-highest year ever when adjusted for inflation. "This is certainly a bright spot in the overall U.S. trade picture."
Glauber said world supplies of grain are tight and consumption is growing - 2 percent a year for wheat and 4.4 percent a year for soybeans. That indicates that the current, relatively high prices for grain are likely to continue, he said.
Some of the increased future production could come from using the 32 million acres of farm land that is now held in a federal reserve program. Glauber said a challenge will be to bring the most productive land back into production while leaving environmentally sensitive land in the reserve program.
©2011 The Omaha World Herald.
