IAMA is a Worldwide Leadership Forum...

Continuing population and consumption growth will mean that the global demand for food will increase for at least another 40 years. Growing competition for land, water, and energy, in addition to the overexploitation of fisheries, will affect our ability to produce food, as will the urgent requirement to reduce the impact of the food system on the environment. The effects of climate change are a further threat. But the world can produce more food and can ensure that it is used more efficiently and equitably. A multifaceted and linked global strategy is needed to ensure sustainable and equitable food security, different components of which are explored here.

February 2010: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has released “The State of Food and Agriculture 2009: Livestock in the balance,” which examines the role of livestock in: food security and poverty reduction; the environment and climate change; and human and animal health.

An international group of researchers that includes three Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists has sequenced the genome of the pea aphid, an achievement expected to lead to better controls and a deeper understanding of a major agricultural pest. The work was published this week in PLoS Biology by the International Aphid Genomics Consortium, a group that includes researchers from the United States, France, Japan, Spain and Australia.

The gradual economic recovery is strengthening the 2010 outlook for U.S. agriculture. Commodities from corn to beef spent much of last year trying to recover from the commodity-price collapse that accompanied the global credit crisis. The expectation for the agricultural sector's continued slow and steady recovery was evident in crop and trade forecasts issued this week by the U.S. Agriculture Department at its annual Outlook Forum.