New directions in crop protection

World population is likely to cross the threshold of 7 billion in October, meaning it has doubled since the late 1960s. In relative terms, the growth has already slowed down significantly since its peak in 1963. However, in absolute numbers, there is no escaping the fact that the number of mouths that need feeding is still rising, while the agricultural surface available to produce food is remaining constant. Making matters worse, there is also an increasing demand for meat, the production of which requires more acreage than the equivalent amount of vegetarian food would. Technology has already played a major role in making the current level of world population possible. It is estimated that more than half the biomass that mankind uses for food depends on nitrogen from the Haber Bosch synthesis. However, the efficiency improvements to be wrung out of synthetic fertilisers and chemical crop protection are already being applied around the globe, so there is not much room to expand global food production through these means. GM crops, while rejected by many people across Europe, have been hailed as a way forward and widely used elsewhere, but are now running into serious difficulties.