Humanity is facing its greatest challenge. To produce 70% more food by 2050 without destroying the environment means doing much more with less. Partly due to the abundant food and record-low food prices achieved by the Green Revolution, overseas development assistance for agriculture dropped...

Doubling food production by 2050 under conditions of climate change and depleted natural resources requires increased investment and creative approaches. The Water-Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project, a five-year public–private partnership begun in 2008 and led by the African...

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has a mandate to improve the livelihoods of the poor in the semiarid tropical (SAT) regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, which is home to 550 million poor people. Sorghum, pearl millet, chickpea, pigeonpea and...

Modern biology is generating revolutionary advances in genetic knowledge and our capacity to change the genetic make up of crops and livestock. Much of this new science is proprietary, owned both by the private sector and increasingly by advanced public sector researchers, leading to a concern...

Africa is short of food, due particularly to increasing population and under-investment in agriculture and agricultural research. For several reasons farm yields are about one-quarter of the global average. New broad cooperative approaches to the problem have had very encouraging results; Malawi...

By 2050, we face the challenge of feeding 50% more people within the finite and diminishing resources on the planet. Significant investment is going into the development of new crop varieties that will offer higher yields, greater pest resistance or better tolerance of adverse conditions. There...

The Crawford Fund’s Annual Parliamentary Conference for 2012, ‘The Scramble for Natural Resources’, addressed a question of fundamental importance to Australia and to the international community: that is, how to feed, adequately, an extra 2 or 3 billion people within a few decades without...

Moderators: Dr Denis Blight AO (Tuesday) Professor Shaun Coffey (Wednesday) Panels: The conference speakers on each day