World now faces competition between food and fuel, expert warns

Global grain yields must rise sharply over the next 50 years to avoid food shortages as an increasingly rich population competes with biofuels for scarce resources, the head of the Scottish Agricultural College has said.

Despite growth in organic farming in some parts of Europe, Professor Bill McKelvey said that while such niche output had a role in the food supply, there was a need to intensify aspects of agriculture to avoid shortages in the future. He said growing affluence in countries like China and India as well as desertification due to climate change would increase strain on the world’s ability to feed itself, but the most pressing threat came from the biofuel revolution.
He noted the European Commission has set a 5.75 per cent target of biofuel incorporation in fuels by 2010, encouraging new rapeseed-derived biodiesel and sugar/grain-derived ethanol plants to be built across the EU.

Current output was well short of targets.

“Grain yields have risen fourfold over the last 50 years and we’ll have to see more of the same over the next 50,” he said.

And this would probably mean a higher acceptance of new genetically-modified (GM) crop strains in Europe in order to achieve the necessary yield increases.

Scotsman
Another report from the same press conference: Telegraph