Feed The World Research Paper

The world we know today is in jeopardy. Our future, and the future of humanity is under grave threat. The threat isn't a close encounter of the third kind, or one of war and destruction, but rather a threat from ourselves. It is a threat born of hunger and starvation from and ever-increasing population of the world, and the struggling system of agriculture in the future if we do not innovate today to provide for the future. One way to feed the world that has shown promising results over the past few years is vertical farming.

The world population is growing at an alarming rate. According to the United Nations, the world population is projected to exceed nine point seven billion people by the year 2050 with an estimated six countries to surpass

This is a task not taken lightly by Marion Guillou the chief executive of France's National Institute for Agricultural Research. In an interview that she had with Declan Butler for nature publishing group, she mentions the food crisis of 2008 were protest of millions of people across the world over diminishing food supplies and high prices took place, and how we cannot allow for our great world society to allow this to happen. She outlines paths that are being taken today that don’t seem to be the way forward for us in this world. One example of a technique that it seems won’t be able to feed the world is G.M.O.s, as she explains it simply does not have the capability to increase crop yields enough, and that they are still searching for solutions to feeding the world to stop starvation. The U.N. has urged for an increase of agriculture production of around sixty percent from the levels of 2005 in the year

First thought up of by Dr. Dickson Despommier and his graduating class from Columbia when Dr. Dickson Despommier challenged his class to create a theoretical project that would lead to sustainability in the city. The students decided that they would try to feed the entire city of New York by growing food on the rooftops of the city. After doing the math they found that using the best crop, a rice, would only feed around two percent of the population. Dr. Dickson Despommier saw potential in this idea and decided to pursue it further and has led to our take on vertical farming today. The clever thing about vertical farming is the differences it has from our conventional forms of agriculture. With a normal farming operation, you have a planting and harvesting seasons, in which you must pick a prime time to plant if you want to insure maximum yield possible. There is also the threat of abiotic and biotic stress. Biotic stress is damage caused by other living organisms, such as insects, bacteria’s, fungus, parasites, and weeds just to name a few that causes loss of crops. Abiotic stress is caused by environmental factors that are not of a biological source, such as an influx, or restriction water, extremes of weather conditions to hot, or lacking proper heat, wind, fertilizers and pesticides are all extremely stressful on plants, and can cause further plant loss. In a typical traditional farm, both sets