Search query: The future of global food security
Video title:  smashed markets and toppled governments remember the revolutions that swept the Middle East in 2011 they all began with people in the street upset over the price of food what's more many of the world's top agricultural experts believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg unless we figure out new strategies to deal with global food security we may be entering a new and dangerous phase of human history where food water and energy shortages threaten not only worse poverty but also civic unrest and international conflict there are a number of reasons for this alarm the first reason is that in most years we produce only just enough food to cover our uses in fact in six of the last 11 years we actually consumed slightly more food than we produced and the buffer we take from one year to the next has been steadily falling so our system already seems pretty fragile but it's when we look into the future that things grow very dire indeed rising populations and our rich diets that take a lot more resources to produce than they used to are driving our demand for food up and scientists figure we'll need 50 percent more food by 2050 but producing this food is going to be hard this is because the rising demand is coming precisely at the same time as high energy prices and climate change are making food harder and more expensive to produce but hidden in these grim statistics is a four-part blueprint we need to follow but since each of these strategies is extremely controversial each requires careful analysis the first strategy includes science and technology today a major scientific hurdle