This week, Sydney is host to 600 wheat specialists from 70 countries who are gathering to discuss the future of the wheat farming industry and long-term goals for food security.
Opening with a keynote from 2014 World Food Prize winner, Sanjaya Rajaram, the conference immediately highlighted the global challenges we face to feed a growing population. With predictions from the United Nations suggesting the world’s population could be as large as 10.9 billion by 2050, Rajaram said wheat production will need to increase 70 percent to meet the population’s food and nutrition needs and highlighted the technological advances that can see this happen.
“The population is continually rising and this directly affects the food security,” Rajaram told Devex. “It’s not that we don’t produce a lot — we do. But there are millions more mouths to feed every year.”
About the author
Lisa Cornish@lisa_cornish
Lisa Cornish is a freelance data journalist based in Canberra, Australia. Lisa formerly worked with News Corp Australia as a data journalist for the national network and was published throughout Australia in major metropolitan and regional newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph in Melbourne, Herald Sun in Melbourne, Courier-Mail in Brisbane and online through news.com.au. Lisa has recently been awarded the 2014 Journalist of the Year by the New South Wales Institute of Surveyors.
