“People do not quite realise the scale of the issue,” says Professor Mike Bevan, acting director of the John Innes Centre in Norfolk. “This is one of the most serious problems that science has ever faced.” In Britain the lives of hundreds of thousands of people will be threatened by food shortages. Across the globe, tens of millions – if not hundreds of millions – will be affected.

Over the next 40 years Britain’s population will rise from 60 to 75 million while the world’s will leap from 6.8 to 9 billion. Feeding all these people will stretch human ingenuity to its limit. Crop yields will have to jump, a goal that will have to be achieved in the middle of global climatic disruption. At the same time, farmers will find many aids – in particular, chemical fertilisers – that they have come to rely on will no longer be available .

Click here to read the Guardian article http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/dec/13/britain-faces-food-shortage

Maybe having less children would help? What do you think? See my blog How Many Children Should We Have?

You can also read about Meat Free Mondays – and how this could make a difference to global warming.