The Face of Agriculture in 2050

DR. DENNIS B. EGLI 

 LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY

Droughts, deluges, and high temperatures are harbingers of a changing climate. Agricultural systems must change, perhaps radically, to counter climate change and continue feeding the world. What systems will produce our food in 2050?

Proposed systems include organic agriculture, agroecological farming (based on ecological principles), sustainable intensification, regenerative agriculture (attempts to replenish and strengthen the soil),  permaculture (emphasizes perennials and polyculture), and local food production to reduce ‘food miles’. Completely new approaches to food production include vertical farming (growing food crops in completely controlled environments), eating insects, using fermentation to produce fats, proteins, and lab grown meat. Reducing food waste and adopting plant-based diets are touted as ways to increase food supplies in the face of a changing climate. Each of these schemes have enthusiasts that promote their reduced effects on climate and their ability to sustainably feed the world.

Which system or systems will represent the agriculture of the future? Will it be a more sustainable version of our current high-input system, a radically different system that has little in common with current  systems, or something in between?  No one knows, but we do know that the system(s) of the future will have to, first,  provide adequate supplies of nutritious food to the world’s population. They must  do this while operating in environments less suitable for crop production than our current environments. Secondly, the system(s) must not be labor intensive. The systems of tomorrow must minimize labor requirements while maintaining high productivity.  

The good news is that the population is growing slower. The United Nations Population Group recently estimated that 66 countries have population growth rates below replacement levels. Some experts suggest that the world population may peak at 9.7 billion by 2050 and then start to decline (UN estimates place the peak closer to 2100). Reducing the rate of population growth will make it easier for any system to meet the demand for food. But the effect of the declining growth rate could be partially offset by an increase in the consumption of meat by more affluent societies.

Many of the proposed production systems minimize off- farm inputs in an attempt to create a self-sustaining system. These approaches usually result in lower yield. Lower yield means more crop land is needed to feed the population or, as described by George Monbiot in his 2022 book (Regensis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet), an increase in agricultural sprawl. Expanding the crop land base usually involves bringing new land into production and cutting down forests which increases the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that fuel climate change. Lower yields require higher prices to economically sustain these systems.  Low-yield agriculture systems may not be the best choice for the agriculture of the future.

Many of the proposed systems are labor intensive compared with the high-input agricultural systems common today. The world is rapidly urbanizing with nearly 70% of the world’s population projected to live in urban areas by 2050 (compared with 30% in 1950).  This long- standing trend of  movement of people from farms to the city may reflect the poverty, unrelenting hard labor, and the lack of opportunity often associated with small share-holding agricultural systems. 

It is unrealistic and unfair to expect food producers to live in poverty to supply cheap food to the rest of society. On the other side of the coin - will society tolerate high food prices to ensure that low-yield, labor-intensive production systems provide adequate income for the practitioners? It seems unlikely that labor-intensive systems will be feeding the world in 2050.   

Will entirely new forms of food production replace conventional agriculture, based on green plants growing in the soil and animals that convert plants into high quality protein, by 2050? Vertical farms are insulated from a changing climate and require much less water than conventional agriculture, but so far, they seem to be limited to producing greens and they seem to have trouble showing a profit. High capital and energy costs (we are, after all, replacing the sun with electric lights) seem to limit these systems.

Fermentation and lab grown meats are currently receiving a lot of attention, but the scalability, GHG emissions, and consumer acceptance remain to be determined. Plant based ‘meats’ that increase the efficiency of food production by replacing animals are available to consumers, but their acceptance seems to be faltering.

What will be the face of agriculture in 2050? There are clearly many options; some are proven systems in operation while others range from concepts still on the laboratory bench to proposals requiring significant changes in dietary habits. No one has a crystal ball that is clear enough to predict which system(s) will prevail in 2050, especially given the complications and uncertainties imposed by climate change. 

The agricultural systems that prevented a Malthusian disaster for the last 100 years, when the world population increased more than four-fold (from 1.8 billion in 1920 to 7.8 billion in 2020), exhibited steady increases in yield and declining labor requirements.    The systems feeding us in 2050 will have to , in some form, continue increases in productivity and lower labor requirements. And, above all, they will have to be economically viable – providing a living wage to the producer of food that all consumers can afford. I am optimistic that human ingenuity will, barring complete and total disaster from climate change, find systems that will meet these requirements and feed the world. ∆

DR. DENNIS B. EGLI: University of Kentucky