Study: Even Maximized Yields Won't Get Enough Grain in 2050

Maximizing cereal crops yields in sub-Saharan Africa would still fail to meet the region's skyrocketing grain demand by 2050, according to a new study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Wageningen University and multiple African institutions.

Sub-Saharan Africa produces about 80 percent of the grain it now consumes. But that consumption could triple if its population rises an expected 250 percent by 2050. Presently, cereal crops account for about half of sub-Saharan Africa's food and farmland.

Even if sub-Saharan yields continue rising at the rate they have over the last quarter-century, the region's existing farmland would still produce only between a third and half of the grain needed in 2050, researchers reported Dec. 12 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The status quo is simply not acceptable," said co-author Ken Cassman, professor emeritus at Nebraska and fellow of the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute. "Complacency is the enemy. This is a clarion call for action."To maintain even 80 percent of its self-sufficiency in 2050, sub-Saharan Africa must reach the realistic yield thresholds of corn, millet, rice, sorghum and wheat, the study found. The region currently grows about a quarter of the cereal crops it could by optimizing its plant and soil management, the authors said. Closing this gap would require what the study called a "large, abrupt acceleration" in yield trajectories similar to the Green Revolution that transformed North American, European and Asian agriculture in the mid-20th century.

http://phys.org/news/2016-12-maximized-yields-sub-saharan-africa-wont.html

Kamil Porembiński

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