Abstract
The demand for food, feed, and feedstocks for bioenergy and biofactory plants will increase proportionally due to population growth, prosperity, and bioeconomic growth. Securing food supply and meeting demand for biomass will involve many biological and agro-ecological aspects such as genetic plant improvement, sustainable land use, water-saving irrigation, and integrated nutrient management as well as control of pests, diseases and weeds. It will be necessary to raise biomass production and economic yield per unit of land—not only under optimum growing conditions, but even more under conditions constrained by climate, water availability, and soil quality. Most of the advanced agronomic research by national and international research institutes is dedicated to the major food crops: maize, rice, wheat, and potato. However, research on crops grown as feedstock, for bio-energy and industrial use under conditions with biophysical constraints, is lagging behind. Global and regional assessments of the potential for growing crops are mostly based on model and explorative studies under optimum conditions, or with either water or nitrogen deficiencies. More investments in combined experimental and modeling research are needed to develop and evaluate new crops and cropping systems under a wide range of agro-ecological conditions. An integral assessment of the biophysical production capacity and the impact on resource use, biodiversity and socio-economic factors should be carried out before launching large-scale crop production systems in marginal environments.
Highlights
The general trend in global food security during the second half of the last century was characterized by a change from shortages to surpluses, resulting in food affluence in the developed world
This finding may be important for restoring natural vegetation, but at the same time it indicates that conversion of marginal land into biomass production for bioenergy will require phosphorus supply by fertilizer or manure [32]
Assessments of the balance between the attainable plant production and the demand for plant produce at regional and global scale are fundamental to developing strategies for food security and meeting the demand of a more bio-based economy
Summary
The general trend in global food security during the second half of the last century was characterized by a change from shortages to surpluses, resulting in food affluence in the developed world. The external inputs (e.g., nitrogen and biocides) were reduced, and crop yields reached a plateau. Food scarcity continued to persist for poor people in developing countries with a still fast growing population and often political instability [2]. Besides political and socio-economic constraints the following play a role: a lack of legislation, a change of food preferences, occurrence of animal and crop diseases, climate change induced weather extremes, an increased scarcity of resources (irrigation water, phosphorus, fertile land), and rising costs of fossil energy [3]. Adaptive and proactive food systems are needed with cross-level, cross-scale, and cross-sector investments and use of frontier technologies to attain food security
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