As the number of people in the world grows each year, the challenge of meeting the world's nutritional needs grows too.
Farmers try to keep up.
Yet more than 800 million people worldwide do not get enough to eat. Between 1990 and 1997, one-third of the world's children under the age of 5 were underweight. One child younger than 5 years old dies from hunger and related causes every 2.7 seconds. Both farmers who grow crops for subsistence and those who grow for profit often plant their land so frequently that the soil cannot replenish its nutrients. This overuse hurts the soil and crop yields in the long run.