Introduction

When you woke up this morning, did you worry about a plague?

Did you worry about war?

Did you worry about famine?

I’m guessing you didn’t. I know I didn’t; well not yet.

We’re among the first generations to be blessed with such peace in our lives—which is something we should be grateful for. Looking ahead at the next thirty years, however, between now and 2050, concerns me.

As I look to the future, I’m not necessarily concerned about a plague, war, or famine, specifically; however, I am concerned about agriculture’s ability to feed the future. Not whether agriculture can feed the future, but rather will agriculture be ALLOWED to feed the future.

You see, agriculture is the glue of civilizations, for without food, you have anarchy, and I see great challenges facing the sector in the near future. Never in the history of mankind has agriculture faced a challenge like we’re going to face in the next thirty years: feeding our ever-growing population hopefully without the impact of war, plague, or famine.

Historically, war, plague, and famine have wiped out millions and millions of humans. However, in the last century, wars have diminished, plagues have lessened, and famine has been greatly reduced largely due to the adoption of science in agriculture.

People believe the global population will continue to rise forever, but according to UN demographers and sites like Gapminder.org, the population will level out at around eleven billion people, likely around the year 2100. Even more conservative demographers predict the population will grow to between nine and ten billion people by 2050, then level out.

The real challenge lies in feeding the population between now and 2050, while the population grows from seven billion to nine or ten billion people. Our pinch point occurs within the next thirty years.

How are we going to feed ten billion people? My belief is that agriculture can again (as in the days of Norman Borlaug1) rise and prove Thomas Malthus2 wrong. I have worked in agriculture my entire life, and despite the great challenges I see in the future, I also see great opportunities.

A few years ago, in Argentina, I was interviewing a scientist who was working on isolating genetic traits that would increase drought tolerance in crops. When discussing the population rise to 2050, she said, “We have three choices. We can kill people, which we have a pretty good track record of doing, we can implement mandatory population control, or we can feed people.”

I doubt that killing people is a solution; although the First World War managed to do so to the tune of thirty-six million. I hope that plagues, like the Spanish Flu that wiped out fifty million people are things of the past.

Mandatory birth control, such as the one-child policy in China, is not that palatable to most people; and it really did not work that well.

So, the logical solution to sustain a population of nine to eleven billion is to figure out how to feed them. It’s going to take all the tools in our toolbox, and we need to ensure that we do so in a sustainable fashion. In fact, so long as we have people on the planet, we must ensure that agriculture is infinitely sustainable.

Consider the numbers:

• To meet the global demand that we will encounter in the next thirty years, we must grow the equivalent of the amount of food we’ve grown in the past ten thousand years.
• By 2050, all countries will need to increase food production by 60–70 percent.

Most countries of the world, especially those that will experience the highest levels of population growth, are net importers of food. These countries need to produce more food to feed their populations, while simultaneously depending upon the exporting nations, such as Canada, Brazil, and New Zealand, to make up any gaps in supply.

When it comes to how I look at the world, I have to admit that I’m a cornucopian. I believe the Earth has enough resources to feed the people on the planet—if we use the technology available to manage them. People look to Silicon Valley for the latest developments in technology, yet many would not realize how often agriculture has been at the leading edge of technology adoption. You think self-driving cars are cool? Hell, farmers have had self-driving tractors for about two decades.

Agriculture has the ability to utilize technology to feed the world, by adopting everything from the aforementioned self-driving tractors, to sensor technology, to artificial intelligence, to bioengineering. In other words, agriculture has come a long way from a horse-drawn plow or a small red open seat tractor.

Not Your Grandpa’s Farm

Most people—especially those not involved in agriculture—have a romanticized view of farming. If asked, a soft smile crosses their face and they’ll say, “I remember my grandpa’s farm.” Well, that image dancing around in your head is not rooted in reality.

The pace of change in agriculture and in society as a whole is increasing faster and faster all the time. People are increasingly separated from the farm. Agriculture’s efficiency allows us to have divisions of labor. You don’t have to wake up every morning to grow your own food and raise your own livestock because farmers are doing it for you.

Agricultural advances have been happening since humans decided to create stationary homesteads rather than live as nomadic hunters and gatherers. The agricultural efficiencies that have happened over the last century as technology advanced and new methods were invented have reshaped farming.

These technological efficiencies have allowed for economic efficiencies as well. As farmers earn more with technology, they, hopefully, create greater economic stability for their families and businesses. This correspondingly has led to economies of scale, meaning that over time farm operations have increased in size.

Not that long ago and still today in many developing nations, farmers basically fed themselves. As they adopted mechanization by the 1940s, one farmer fed about twenty other people. The stats say that today, one North American farmer feeds more than 165 people, which allows those other 164 people to do other things like become doctors, engineers, musicians, artists, or whatever.

But I think those numbers are wrong.

The stats say that one to two percent of the North American population are farmers and while that may be true, many of these reporting incomes as farmers are not full-time viable farming operations.

I would argue the number is much smaller if one considers which of these 2.1 million US and 0.9 million Canadian farms are what I call farms of consequence, that is, those that produce over 80 percent of our food.

Of our total Canadian and US population of 364 million, I would estimate the farmers of consequence to represent between 0.1 to 0.2 percent of the population, probably less.

That means farmers who run farms of consequence in the United States could fit into a very large college football stadium or two. In Canada, where I come from, the people who run farms of consequence could fit into a large professional hockey arena. Regardless of the country, that’s not a lot of people.

Agriculture today is an extremely sophisticated business of high risk, yet still close to 97 or 98 percent of farms of consequence are family farms. Don’t add a girl with pigtails and a freckle-faced boy to your bib-wearing farmer fantasy. It’s a family business, an incorporated business of consequence that needs to operate in a sustainable manner.

Today’s modern farm business has little to do with the image likely dancing in your head. Technology has changed the farm, like it has the TV repair business (oh wait, that’s gone) or the general store (oops—gone too); it’s not your grandpa’s farm anymore.

Few people have a connection with the farm of today, and fewer understand what it takes to run a farm of consequence. While 0.2 percent of the population is in the true “business” of farming, many of the other 99.8 percent are often quick to criticize “big” ag, factory farms, and science such as GMOs, without understanding the history, science, and economics behind those modern, technologically advanced farming practices.

If you’re one of those people, I’d like you to open your mind and read the pages of this book; I’m going to share some of the science and technology behind the agricultural practices that will enable us to feed the population of 2050.

Hopefully, as you read this book, you will begin to understand what it takes to run a farm of consequence and will develop empathy for this extremely small, but vitally important segment of our population.

If you are a farmer or...