The opportunities ahead...decades worth of them

We all receive "a fair volume" of e-mail and have to be skillful about sifting through it all and deciding if we spend anything more than the time it takes to hit delete! I was forced to sit back on my haunches and think "What have I just read??" when I received an e-mail from Murray Hunt of the Ontario Sheep Marketing Agency in April of this year. The headline on the message Murray had found and passed along read: "World food production needs to double in next forty years". Mercy, can you ever go a few million directions with that one line!

I discussed this headline and the idea behind it with a number of people. There a those who will quickly say: "Not so, actually world population growth has slowed down from earlier estimates. Already this has been proven to be inaccurate."

Others are quick to ask: "Where are we going to get the water to do so?"

Still others go behind the headline and discover fuller context. The concept was we are going to have untold billions of not only mal-nourished but truly starving people in this world over the next four decades if food production does not increase significantly. The reality of starving people all over this world is already with us and has been for decades.

And then the questions start popping up in your head. Who is going to make this food production happen? Will the vast majority of it come from corporate farms? Factory farms, whatever that means now? Does this mean a lot more use of fertilizers? Yes, where will we find the water? What about the land? Can we reclaim some of the needed land? Will there be a margin in growing that food? Which foods make the most sense? Animal, vegatable??? Have we lost some of the plant or animal speicies that could be valuable?

This headline contains more than food for thought. It relates to a whole generation of young people
who may be awash in opportunity as this growing challenge (pardon the pun!) is addressed. There are two basic messages from a headline like this: Is it true? If yes, how do we get moving on meeting the need? Time to get ready!