Agriculture and Food Needs to 2025 : Why We Should be Concerned

Text of the Sir John Crawford Lecture delivered by retiring TAC chairman Alex McCalla at CGIAR International Centers Week, October 1994. McCalla discussed the increases in world agricultural productivity required to meet global food needs in 2025. Reviewing the current range of positions between 'optimists' and 'pessimists,' he noted the discrepancy between the consensus over the demand side of feeding 8 billion people by 2025, and the lack of consensus regarding the supply side - the prospects of food production rising to meet that demand. He closed by deploring the decline in development resources available for agriculture, and particularly for research.