Modern agriculture is producing more food per capita than ever before. At the same
time, according to estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
almost 800 million people of today’s world population of seven billion are currently
chronically undernourished. An additional two billion people are suffering from
micronutrient deficiencies, lacking key vitamins and minerals. In 2014, 1.9 billion people
were overweight, and of these, 600 million were obese. Climate change is presenting
an enormous new challenge to agriculture while the world population is predicted to
increase to 9.7 billion by 2050. Whether clean water, fertile soils, forests, wetlands and
other natural resources, as well as the biodiversity of the planet, will be available to
future generations in a condition that enables them to survive will depend crucially on
the way we produce our food and on what we eat. An enormous share of human-induced
greenhouse gas emissions result directly or indirectly from agricultural production and
the subsequent processing, storage, transport and disposal of food. One-third of the
world’s population obtains its livelihood from agriculture. Agriculture and food is by
far the world’s largest business and therefore closely linked to sustainable development.
The IAASTD process
It was against this backdrop that the World Bank and the United Nations initiated
a unique international scientific process to evaluate the state of global agriculture,
its history and future: the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge,
Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), commonly known as the World
Agriculture Report. More than 400 scientists from all continents and a broad spectrum
of disciplines worked together for four years with the aim of answering the following
question:
“How can we reduce hunger and poverty, improve rural livelihoods and facilitate equitable,
environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development through the generation
of, access to, and use of agricultural knowledge, science and technology?”
