Modern technology enhances food production and is essential to the task of feeding a world population that is expected to hit nine billion by 2050, according to Jeff Simmons, president of Elanco. “By 2050, the world will need to produce 100 percent more food, and according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 70 percent of the increased production must come from efficiency-enhancing agricultural technologies,” Simmons said at a presentation in Washington this week launching a white paper on “Making Safe, Affordable, and Abundant Food a Global Reality.”
The paper addresses how highly efficient food production can help alleviate hunger and exposes consumer perceptions about technology use. The paper is available at www.elanco.com/news-media.html.
“Simply stated, technology enables three basic rights,” Simmons said. “Food is a basic human right; choice is a consumer right; and sustainability is environmentally right,” he said.
Simmons said a new research survey representing more than 97,000 consumers in 26 nations shows about 95 percent of people are either neutral or fully supportive of using technology to produce their food. “Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of consumers are supportive of agricultural technologies that enable the three rights, some fringe groups seek to restrict farmers’ access to technologies that make safe, affordable food more abundant,” Simmons said. “We must end the debate about the role of technology in the sustainable production of safe, affordable, and abundant food,” he said.
