By: Sarah Chase

According to the “experts” and those directly involved in agriculture worldwide are now on the verge of confronting an unprecedented challenge as to their ability to provide food, fibre and fuel to a growing world population.

Currently, the population of the world stands at just around 7 billion and this number is expected to increase to around 10-billion by 2050.

Unsurprisingly, this population rise will be greater in developing countries.  While some of the population growth rates in the UK and Europe have stabilized, with some nations even reporting negative rates, the two leaders in population growth, according to the World Bank, are China and India, with populations of 1.3 and 1-billion, respectively.   According to a report I recently read, which specifically detailed all known challenges to global agriculture … it is the economic growth in India and China that have been most dramatic in recent years and, as incomes in these countries have increased, the demand for more and better food has logically followed.

If we look just at India, for instance, it has been shown that when incomes have risen from about $1/day to just over $2/day …  the average expenditure on food more than doubles.  In China, where similar income increases have occurred, food expenditure has tripled … and one can see this same pattern repeated throughout the developing world. 

This is not an event in isolation … this is a global trend that will continue.

What we also know is that rising populations will be increasingly urban. More people will become consumers instead of producers of food. They will, as they have always done historically, settle around existing cities and towns taking up land that previously produced crops for consumption.

Land that is suitable for farming, including with it access to fresh water, will be at a premium

According to the World Bank … with higher global populations we will see increases in individual income and economic demand.   This will mean that world food requirements will double by 2050 and that the number of undernourished people is expected to escalate well beyond the hundreds of millions … a tragic figure to be sure. 

Without reasoned perspective and a clear course of action  … what threatens us on the horizon is the potential for stagnant economic growth, political decline, unruly competition for natural resources, unintended environmental consequences and worse. 

Already, we are all too well aware that climate change is requiring agriculture to adapt to ongoing changes … as we speak our nations, NGO’s and international businesses are placing growing emphasis on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. 

Today, especially in the United States, they see an already massive demand for agricultural output for non-food purposes such as biofuels … and further concerns about the long-term consequences of genetically modified foods and bioengineering.

Undoubtedly, in the farming world the ability to make and COMMUNICATE new improvements in technology, practices, even innovations to public policy … will be ever more vital to our existence, both as nations and as human beings. 

Failure to properly communicate and deliver the news and innovations on a global scale … would mean an increasing number of malnourished people, depletion of natural resources and further degradation to the environment.

In the UK and, indeed, in most  nation’s with developed economies … both public policies and private-sector decisions have been influenced by decades of abundance and declining real food prices.  Unlike 50-years ago when we were rationing food, today we’re in a time when food falls off the shelves and milk is left to sour.  Yet, paradoxically, many in the world continue to starve and we must not remain comfortable or complacent as we plan for what lies before us.  

I do not believe that it is an over-exaggeration to say that we have entered a new era in agriculture … a time in which we will thrive or perish based upon our ability to adjust and adapt each of our global agricultural sectors in order to sustain us through competing and growing demands for food, fuel and products … all the while working with increasingly limited natural and financial resources. 

Our inaction or our reaction without a clear vision for the long-term, risks leaving us to suffer through the unintended consequences that are the result of inconsistency, largely brought on by poor communication methods. 

Public understanding of agriculture has changed significantly, especially over the last half century with the advent of TV, and dramatically in the last 10-years with the Internet.  Likewise, as we find ourselves in a knowledge-based society, extrapolated from the source of our food and nourishment ... the segment of the population engaged in agriculture has declined significantly.  Farms now represent only a small share of all households, especially in the UK where one is often led to believe that “there’s no future in farming.”  Yet, at the same time, consumers are increasingly concerned, and often misinformed, about how their food is produced and farmers, who become increasingly more discouraged, struggle to address public attitudes about these concerns.

Agriculturally-minded TV has the capacity to expose an international audience to many of the concerns and issues that have made themselves apparent with both global food demand and the growing rural to urban divide.  TV is a mass media force, which works to dispel global misconceptions, help reduce uncertainty, improve public understanding by offering information to the public and a voice to the rural and farming communities … all whilst mitigating unintended consequences and smoothing the way for a more aware, informed international consensus as to a clear strategy for the future of farming, agriculture and the rural world. 

Because of inescapable modern advances, our small-town communities have an increasingly global reach.  From the threats of pandemics to local outbreaks of blue-tongue and the international economic ramifications of hoof and mouth disease … the ability to stay one-step ahead of the issues is ever-more important both to our industries and to our heritage.  Land use, preservation, parliamentary rulings, hunting laws, right-of-use, taxation, carbon emission goals, road congestion, green trends … are all issues that have our farms and rural areas placed right in the centre of controversy.

This is precisely why TV serves as both a point of inspiration and information from around the world.  With our timely programs on commodities, environmental product innovations, coupled with farming reports, and open interviews from leading international agricultural and equestrian experts … TV serves as an intelligent focal point for common rural interests and public awareness. 

At this very point in time, interest in farming and rural matters is extremely high, not only from those who live the life, but also from a large portion of city dwellers.  I firmly believe that, in the past, broadcasters have poorly served this interest, until now.