Feeding the Future

Feeding the Future

From The Science Behind Your Salad by BASF Agricultural Solutions

March 10, 2025 · 35 min · Season 1 · Episode 27

About this episode

The episode discusses the challenges and innovations in agriculture needed to feed a growing global population by 2050.

Feeding humanity in the future brings a complex set of interconnected challenges. What’s abundantly clear is that, over the coming decades, farming isn’t just about producing more, it’s about doing it differently, with the environment and society’s needs central to the task in hand.   In this episode of the Science Behind Your Salad, Jane Craigie explores feeding the future, evolving and adapting to climate change and its mitigation, and innovating, just as agriculture has done for centuries.   For Jack Bobo, UCLA’s Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies, and seasoned keynote speaker, it’s important not to forget what has been achieved thanks to agricultural advances. To put this into context, he says that if we were farming today with 1960s technology, we would require one billion additional hectares.   What we consider as ‘the future’ centres around the year 2050 and feeding 1.5 billion more people with an estimated 50% more food and 70% more protein, this is a very stretching goal, yet farmers are ready to take on the challenge.  For Thomas and Jana Gäbert, their cooperative farm in…

People in this episode

Host: Jane Craigie

Guests: Jack Bobo, Thomas Gäbert, Jana Gäbert, Richard Hinchliffe

Topics covered

  • future of farming
  • climate change
  • sustainable agriculture
  • food production
  • community farming

Keywords

  • agriculture
  • food security
  • climate adaptation
  • sustainable practices
  • local sourcing

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: UCLA’s Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies

Places: Trebbin, Berlin, Yorkshire

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