Global Food Security for Tomorrow

Resumed from: Swaminathan, M.S. Global Food Security for Tomorrow. UNU. Tokyo: , Volume (2000)


Food security is terminology for the availability and an economic access to food and the biological absorption of food in the body of one region. The green revolution has so far helped to keep the rate of growth in food production above the population growth rate. It will be appropriate to refer to the emerging scientific progress on farms as an "ever-green revolution", to emphasize that the productivity advanced is sustainable over time since it rooted in the principles of ecology, economic, social and gender equity, and employment generation. In the near future we will face several new problems as:

1. An increasing population lead to increase demand for food and reduce per capita availability of arable land and irrigation water.
2. Improved purchasing power and increased urbanization leads to higher per capita food grain requirements due to increase consumption of animal products.
3. Marine fish production is tending to become stagnant and coastal aquaculture is facing environmental problem.
4. There is increasing damage to the ecological foundations of agriculture.
5. While dramatic new technological are taking place, particularly in the field of biotechnology, their environmental, health, and social implications are yet to be fully understood.

Emerging farming technologies will be based on precision farming methods leading to plant-scale rather than field-scale husbandry. GIS, GPS, also information and computer technologies urgently needed for future farming system. Biotechnology also has to play an increasingly important role in strengthening food, water and health security system. The gene revolution, the ecotechnology revolution and the information and communication revolution will influence agriculture and industry in a fundamental manner.

On the Gene revolution, several large corporations in Europe and USA have made major investment in adapting these technologies to produce new plant varieties of importance for large-scale commercial agriculture. The same technologies have equal important potential application for addressing food security in the developing countries. The key technological developments in this area are genomics, bioinformatics, transformation, molecular breeding, diagnostics, and vaccine technology. In order to take advantage of recombinant DNA technologies (transgenic) without associated harm to human or ecological health it is important to have suitable institutional structure and regulations for biosafety, bioethic, and biosurveillance in each country.

The new development have opened up new opportunities for developing technologies that can lead to higher productivity without adverse impact on natural resources base. Blending traditional and frontier technologies lead to the birth of echtechnologies with combined strength in economics, ecology, social and gender equity, employment generation and energy conservation. The promotion of ecotechnology development and dissemination, the effective adoption of integrated system of gene, and natural resources management, and the effectiveness harnessing of information technologies should become essential element of the science and technology for basic human needs movement.