Crop Science and Technology, Introduction

In the coming decades, there will be a severe pressure on human food, animal feed, and fiber production. In the next 50 years, we may need to increase crop production by at least 50%: population of the world is expected to increase more than 2 billion people during the next half-century, and the individual demands for food will concurrently increase as well (associated with improved wealth particularly – though not exclusively – in several already highly populated areas of Asia). In addition, bio-energy applications are already exerting increasing pressure on agricultural commodities and land use worsening further the growth of the demand for crop products.

We have been practicing agriculture during the last c. 10,000 years. In the first 9,950 years since the beginning of agriculture, every time the demand increased there was an expansion of the land used in agriculture, driving human migrations. But land available for crop production has not been increasing much during the last 50...