How Much Food do We Need to Produce to Keep up with Population Growth?

By the year 2050, it is estimated that farmers will have to produce as much as 70 percent more food to keep up with population growth — that means more than a billion tons more of cereals every year and at least 200 million tons of meat a year just to keep everyone fed.

More about food production and global population growth:

• The global population is expected to grow by more than 2 billion people between 2010 and 2050 — that's almost double the population of China.


• Almost 90 percent of this new food will have to come from increased yields on currently farmed land, because arable land is becoming increasingly limited.


• The region with the fastest population growth is sub-Saharan Africa, which, along with the Caribbean, is where most of the expansion in arable land is expected to occur.