Food security and the Futures of Farms: 2020 and towards 2050

Clarifying the challenges and long-term outlooks.

Food security entails the challenges of feeding the population of more than 9 billion by 2050 that will also be much richer, overcoming today’s hunger, and achieving all this in sustainable ways. World agriculture production and food systems are in a process of rapid transformation while food security remains highly unsatisfactory and appears increasingly at risk. Key policy issues and research questions are:

• Populations connected with small farms include the majority of the world’s poor people. What will be the future of small farms? And, what role for large scale farming?
• Institutional arrangements between farms and processors and retailers redefine markets and value chains in the future. What are efficient and fair arrangements that share value?
• Technology and accelerated agricultural research investment (public and private) could facilitate innovation. How can this be facilitated and the access to technology be enhanced?
• Resource scarcity, i. e. land and water, increases costs of farming. Climate change poses further risks. What is and what shall be the appropriate responses?

The above mentioned challenges shall be addressed in this international conference that assesses the future of agriculture and food security.

Professor Joachim von Braun was awarded the 2009 Bertebos Prize. He was Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington DC 2002–2009 and is now Director of the Center for Development Research at Bonn University, Germany. He is a leading researcher and policy advisor in the field of food security, agriculture, and development economics. He
was internationally highly recognized in recent years for his early drawing attention to the world food crisis. He will introduce the conference with the Bertebos Prize Lecture 2010 on “Food Security and
the Futures of Farms”.

The conference will partly draw on various scenario and visioning projects that are currently ongoing or have recently been completed, and will aim at synthesis and original insights.