Achieving Global Food Security through Sustainable Development of Agriculture and Food Systems with Regard to Nutrients, Soil, Land, and Waste Management

Ensuring that the food supply both keeps up with current population growth and changing food preferences are the main challenges of agriculture. Food security includes access to a sufficient amount of quality food products. Population growth, food preferences and economic wealth are variables that drive agricultural production, although agriculture does produce raw materials other than for food. The world population of 9 billion projected for 2050 will require food production to increase by 50 % to 70 %, with raw materials and waste increasing by the same percentages. However, there will be no significant changes in the amount of arable land; the increase in production will come about through agricultural intensification, the disparity between real and potential yield being known as the yield gap. Innovation in management techniques will focus on optimizing water use, both for irrigated and rain-fed crops. In addition, nutrient management will have to be intensified to fill the production gap. Sustainable management focuses on improving nutrient efficiency, but also includes waste management. Sustainable agriculture must introduce a circular economy model and reverse logistics for waste management, and in particular to the nutrient cycle. © 2014, Springer International Publishing AG.