World food output must rise 70 percent by 2050: FAO

The world will have to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to feed a projected extra 2.3 billion people and as incomes rise, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization said Wednesday. Global cereals demand for food and animal feed is expected to rise to 3 billion tonnes by 2050 and more demand may come from the biofuels industry, the FAO said in a statement. Annual cereals output would have to grow by almost one billion tonnes from about 2.1 billion tonnes at present to meet the projected food and feed demand by 2050, the agency said. Meat output should increase by more than 200 million tonnes to reach 470 million tonnes in 2050, the Rome-based FAO said. "FAO is cautiously optimistic about the world's potential to feed itself by 2050," said FAO's Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem. But he added that climate change and biofuels demand would be the main challenges for world agriculture...Reuters