Strengths and Weaknesses of National Agricultural Research Systems: Attracting the Next Generation of Grasslands Researchers

Strengths and Weaknesses of National Agricultural Research Systems: Attracting the Next Generation of Grasslands Researchers

In the 1960s and 1970s the world faced up to the poverty and hunger facing a significant proportion of the global population, which at the time was around 4 billion people. The efforts of Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution resulted in food production increasing as the technologies and knowledge known at the time were directed to that task. The success of the Green Revolution was such that governments and the world communities turned attention to other issues and agricultural development slid down the list of priorities. The world population is now over 7 billion and projected to be over 9 billion by 2050. FAO (2012b) estimates that around 870 million people were under-nourished (in terms of dietary energy supply) in the period 2010–12; one in eight people globally. Food production will need to increase by 50 to 70% by 2050 to meet food security demands and this increase will have to be achieved through productivity gains given the limitation on global productive lands. Food production faces competition from biofuels, mining and urban sprawl for those lands, making productivity gains an even greater imperative.