Organic Farming In Developing Countries

What will happen by 2050? (Introduction/Global):

Fifty years ago the world had fewer than half as many people as it has today.

They were not as wealthy; they consumed fewer calories, ate less meat and as well required less water to produce their food.

The world’s population will reach 9.1 billion, that is 34% higher than today.

Nearly all of this population increase will occur in developing countries.

In order to feed this population, food production must increase by 70 per cent.

Annual meat production will need to rise by over 200 million tonnes to reach 470 million tonnes.

By 2050 demand for food will double.

Demand rise because lots of people will have higher incomes, which means they will eat more, especially meat.

Solutions:

Organic farming has seen some impressive results when it comes to increasing yields. A report I found from the Worldwatch Institute looked at long-term research on organic farming methods that focus on improving soil health, and found that organic farms yielded about the same amount of food as conventional farms in wealthy countries, and up to 20% more food in developing countries.

2. Growing Different Crops, and Grow Them Differently:

What farmers grow is as important as how they grow it, and some researchers are looking to hardier food crops and biodiversity as a solution to help increase yields.

Our industrial food system focuses on what’s called monocropping, which means farmers plant the same crops on the same land year after year.

Monocropping means less biodiversity in the field, which if used alot is bad for yields.

3. Urban Farming:

Farmers need to grow food in more places.

With more than half of the world population now living in urban areas, it is a good idea to start growing food where lots of people are

Hong Kong's Food Waste:

In 2011, Hong Kong people threw away about 3,600 tonnes of food waste every day.

Two Thirds came from homes (around 2,500 tonnes) and one third from food-related commercial and industrial sources.

Hong Kong's food waste disposal is equal to throwing away the weight of approximately 250 double-decker buses every 24 hours or nearly 100,000 double-decker buses every year.

Reducing the quantity of food waste is very important to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong's target is to cut down the amount of food waste that goes to landfills by at least 40% by 2022.

Hong Kong's goal is to reduce food waste to landfills from around 3,600 tonnes a day to around 2,160 tonnes a day (a reduction of about 500,000 tonnes per year) over the course of about eight years.

Hong Kong's Solutions (Environment Bureau):

Mobilize the community

Prevent and reduce food waste:

Preventing and reducing food waste saves resources and cut environmental impacts. Roughly a third of the food produced in the world for human consumption is wasted or lost every year, amount to 1.3 billion tonnes annually.

Recycle and treat separated food waste:

Turn food waste into renewable