Farmscape for June 1, 2015

The executive environment editor of National Geographic Magazine suggests, if agriculture is to meet the growing demand for food, we have to do a better job of producing food on the land already in production and we need to waste less.
"Why Food Now: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion" was among the topics discussed as part of the Canadian Nutrition Society 2015 Annual Conference which wrapped up Saturday in Winnipeg.
Dennis Dimick, the executive environment editor with National Geographic Magazine, says it's often said that we have enough food now in the world and we can likely grow enough food for 9 billion people but the questions are will that food be affordable and can we afford to grow enough food while also preserving some of the natural landscapes and the forests that remain on the planet.

Clip-Dennis Dimick-National Geographic Magazine:
The key factors that influence what is produced, one, there going to be demand, what is it that people want to eat?
That drives a lot of market choices but also, now it's the question of what can we grow where, and we have assumed that we can grow corn and soy in the midwest of the U.S. for example.
You can grow canola in the prairies of Canada.
The question though is that we are seeing growing zones shifting.
We're seeing growing seasons change.
Springs are coming earlier, winters coming later, we're seeing more extreme weather events, all of these things are affecting where we have traditionally thought about as being places we can normally grow food.

Dimick suggests if you want to save forests you're going have to freeze the footprint of agriculture and you're going to have to raise up the productivity of the farms in the land that's already being used for farming and to be able to meet those demands maybe we need to waste less.
He says we have realize we can't keep cutting down forests to grow more food on more land, we have to do a better job on the land we've already got in agriculture.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council