The world’s population is predicted to reach 9 billion by 2050, additionally a growing middle class in developing nations will place even greater pressure on global food supply. 

It’s no surprise, therefore, that global food security has become a red hot issue for the media and governments worldwide.

In July 2009 at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, 26 countries, including Australia, and 14 multilateral agencies endorsed The Joint Statement on Global Food Security  which outlines a coordinated approach to food security.

The supporting countries and agencies (among these the United Nations, World Bank and World Trade Organisation) agreed “to act with the scale and urgency needed to achieve sustainable global food security”. They acknowledged that “the food security agenda should focus on agriculture and rural development by promoting sustainable production, productivity and rural economic growth”.

The productivity of food-producing industries, like horticulture, is now firmly part of the international and national agendas. 
In March 2010, the Minister for Agriculture, the Hon Tony Burke MP, raised the issue of global food security at the ABARE Outlook Conference, noting that food security is one of the “three biggest issues in the world” along with climate change and the global financial crisis.

The CEO of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, Dr Nick Austin, also spoke on the need for a revolution in productivity to deal with global food security.

“Population growth and constraints on food production, including from the anticipated affects of climate change and shifting supply and demand patterns, must be balanced by improved agricultural yields,” Dr Austin said.

"What is necessary is not one revolution in agricultural productivity, but a series of country specific responses to spark a range of mini-revolutions in productivity that leverages off intellectual capital and an understanding of the environment.”

For more than 20 years Australia’s horticultural industries, along with other agricultural industries, have been investing through rural research and development corporations, such as Horticulture Australia Limited (HAL), in sustainably improving their productivity.

Productivity increases in horticulture have been achieved through developments across the spectrum of agronomic practices such as soil management, plant nutrition, tree management, plant physiology, planting design and propagation systems as well as through breeding programs that have produced new higher yielding varieties.

Some examples of projects that have been working toward increasing productivity are:

• Intensive growing systems which have been developed in several industries, most notably the apple industry. The system encourages trees to produce commercial yields earlier and reduce costs through creating a pedestrian orchard by employ a combination of using dwarfing rootstock, closer plantings, minimised pruning to encourage the tree to fruit earlier and limb training to remove vigour from the tree’s growth.
• An avocado project that aims to improve yield and quality in avocado through disease management.
• A cherry project that will improve marketable yield of premium quality cherries by providing an understanding of factors influencing fruit cracking. The findings will lead to improved orchard management practices that mitigate yield loss associated with rain-induced cracking.

Australia and its horticultural industries have a part to play in meeting the challenge of the global food crisis. The investment in programs to increase productivity over the past 20 years and going forward will not only benefit the horticulture industry, it will help to meet the increasing demand for global food supply.