Conserving Crop Biodiversity: Navigating Politics and Climate Change to Create a Global System
2008
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Details
Title
Conserving Crop Biodiversity: Navigating Politics and Climate Change to Create a Global System
Author(s)
Fowler, Cary
Issue Date
Sep 03 2008
Publication Type
Conference Paper/ Presentation
DOI and Other Identifiers
10.22004/ag.econ.124518
Record Identifier
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/124518
PURL Identifier
http://purl.umn.edu/124518
Language
English
Total Pages
6
Note
A couple of months ago a journalist from a
magazine asked me to name the five most
important or influential books in my life. I had to
start off with a little book called Zeek the Rabbit
which hooked me on reading when I was about
seven or eight years old, and that left me four
more slots. One of those slots I gave to a
remarkable book that I keep going back to over
and over again. It’s a haunting and informative
book called Feeding the Ten Billion written by an
Australian plant physiologist named Lloyd Evans.
Lloyd looked at different moments in human
history, going all the way back to when the
population was five million and then 50 million,
100 million, a billion, 2 billion, and 3 billion. He
asked what kind of food system was in place for
each of those periods and how the way in which
people procured or produced food had changed as
the population grew, as the technology changed
and as the environment changed. Today, as the
population races along towards the nine billion
expected in 2050, this is a question that should be
examined. Just as important, perhaps, as asking
how are we going to feed two and a half billion
more people on planet earth, is asking how are we
going to deal with an extra two degrees of
temperature, or more.