Zero Hunger

• [New] United Nations has allocated 100 million US dollar to help people feed themselves in countries most at risk from the growing hunger epidemic caused by conflict, economic decline, climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic.
• [New] With the world's demand for meat projected to double by 2050, cultured meat offers an innovative food system that will provide nutritional security, drastically reduce carbon emissions, and increase food safety worldwide.
• [New] The USDA expects Chinese wheat imports to reach the highest level in 25 years, with total imports of corn and other coarse grains setting a new record.
• [New] Over the next six years (2021-26), the World Bank will focus on five key areas in Africa - food security, clean energy, green and resilient cities, environmental stability, and climate shocks - that emphasize the interrelatedness of climate risks and opportunities.
• [New] Additional patents are expected to be granted prior to the end of the year, providing protection for a large number of PRE tec peptides in a wide range of agricultural uses in key countries around the world.
• Farmers and construction workers will likely be the most affected, with the agricultural sector accounting for an estimated 60% of all global working hours lost due to heat in 2030.
• The global market for artificial intelligence for agriculture is expected to surpass $2 billion by 2024.
• For Brazil, large areas of pastureland suited for agriculture remain, with further shifts in production patterns and increased yields projected to occur over the next few years.
• USDA is looking for ready-to-go technologies and practices to achieve its goal of increasing agricultural production by 40% to meet global population needs in 2050 while cutting U.S. agriculture's environmental footprint in half.
• For all the disruption of 2020, the agriculture industry continued to operate strongly and supply the global population with food; even as consumption shifted from restaurants to in-home, agribusiness was able to adjust.
• Post COVID-19, the Asia-Pacific and Japan region is expected to offer high market growth opportunities owing to the increasing urban population, the growing market penetration of internet farming practices, and the rising favorable government investments.
• Unless urgent action is taken, the COVID-19 pandemic could almost double the number of people suffering from acute hunger by the end of 2020.
• British farming is committed to playing its part in tackling climate change and the NFU has an ambition for British agriculture to reach net zero by 2040.
• The US Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service has scaled up its estimate for India's cotton crop in 2020-21 (Aug-Jul) to 29.4 mln bales (1 US bale = 218 kg) from 28.9 mln bales projected earlier.
• With the Brazilian Government now providing higher domestic economic incentives to the agricultural sector in response to COVID-19, Brazil is expected to continue increasing its agricultural competitiveness over the next decade.
• The number of food insecure people reached 7.7 million in Zimbabwe in the first quarter of 2020, and WFP projects 8.6 million people to be food insecure by the end of 2020 (3.3 million in urban areas).
• In the next 30 years the effects of climate change could induce up to 30 million Central American migrants to head for the United States.
• The global artificial intelligence market in agriculture industry is expected to grow by USD 205.87 million.
• Food security is one of the major challenges facing humanity, and it is expected to intensify over the coming decades; with its strong multidimensionality, it is linked to poverty and hunger, health, economic development, energy, water, climate change, desertification, trade and technology transfer.

Last updated: 22 November 2020