ABU DHABI: In the coming 50 years the world will have to produce and sell as much food as it did in the past 4,000, a food security expert says.
“It’s a challenging time at the moment because when we look ahead, the world will change considerably,” said Dr Aalt Dijkhuizen, president of Topsector Agri and Food in the Netherlands.
“Three billion people will move from low income to middle class and this has the biggest effect in the short term because it means in the coming 40 to 50 years, we have to produce and sell as much food as we did in the past 4,000 years. It’s amazing.”
Topsector Agri and Food is a collaboration and innovation network between government, private partners and research institutes.
The Netherlands, the second-biggest food exporter after the US, is one of the countries with which the UAE has formed partnerships to help secure its food in the future. The UAE imports about 90 per cent of its food requirements.
In February last year, Sultan Al Mansoori, the Minister of Economy, visited the Netherlands where both countries signed an agreement on food innovation co-operation.
There is expected to be a tremendous increase in demand for high-quality protein. Demand for vegetables, dairy products and meat is set to double.
“It’s a big challenge but also a big opportunity for people in the food and agriculture industry,” Dr Dijkhuizen said. “It’s doable but a lot of work needs to be done.
“The total land for agriculture will decline and resources will become more limited so we have to do better. It sounds easy but doing more of the same is much easier than doing better.
“The entire world needs to produce food in a better way, and that takes a generation.”
The Netherlands, a small country of 45,000 square kilometres, surpassed €100 billion (Dh452.9bn) in exports last year. The country gets five times more value from every hectare than the rest of Europe.
“We produce a lot ourselves, like dairy and meat, but also import a lot of ingredients like soil, so it’s a combination of our own production and import,” Dr Dijkhuizen said.
“Our biggest sector is horticulture and livestock, and we don’t have a lot of extensive production systems or a lot of arable land. Our land and labour is too expensive, so each square metre should be used as much as possible.
