How to Feed the Planet (VIDEO)
How can we feed the population of the planet once that population reaches 9 billion? Or, how about feeding the 7 billion currently on the planet, especially when 1 million go hungry every day and 1 million are overfed? Watch National Geographic Executive Editor Dennis Dimick on the challenges we face feeding our growing population:
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Dennis Dimick
So how do we go about feeding more people? “The common perception is, ‘oh, we’ll just cut down more forests, turn them into more farms.’ That’s historically how we’ve done it,” Dimick told genConnect.
But if you want to save forests, you can’t keep cutting down trees, he pointed out. We also need to make better use of our outputs – for corn and beef, for example – so that more of it is used for actual food consumption, Dimick added. We can also reduce food waste, both on the production side – particularly in developing countries – and on the demand side.
“There’s one study out that said, if you can just reduce global consumption of food by 500 calories a day, you’d go almost 10 percent of the way there toward helping meet future food needs by mid-century,” Dimick noted. “It’s more than just supply side. Let’s take a look at demand side.”
Related: The Power of National Geographic, Online
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