During BioVision 2007, experts acknowledged that ensuring adequate food supply is a great challenge due to population growth and limited water and land resources that are available. They agreed that there is a crucial need to increase global food production. In 2009, the “Food for All” session will deal with the specific aspects of food supply in large urban areas: if we do succeed in producing enough food to feed the world, will we be able to bring this food production to everybody’s plate?

Local communities have conserved the diversity of agricultural species for thousands of years. Supporting them is key to achieving global food security, says M.S. Swaminathan.

Of the 75,000 or so edible plant species, only around 150 are widely cultivated, just three of which provide 50 per cent of our food. In humanity’s drive to feed an ever-growing population, we have become dependent on a few high-yielding varieties of these crops.

Another 40 million people have been pushed into hunger this year primarily due to higher food prices. This brings the overall number of undernourished people in the world to 963 million, and the ongoing financial and economic crisis could tip even more people into hunger and poverty, FAO warned.

Harnessing the continent’s largely untapped water resources is critical in feeding and providing for its people. A multi-billion dollar, long-term irrigation and hydroelectricity Blue Revolution programme is currently being considered.

Multinationals have a major role to play in securing global food production, explains Giovanni Malfatti of the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform.

Responding to sub-Saharan Africa's soil health crisis, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) announced yesterday an ambitious new effort to produce the first-ever, detailed digital soil map for all 42 countries of the region. This project combines the latest soil science and technology with remote satellite imagery and on-the-ground efforts to analyze thousands of soil samples from remote areas across the continent to help provide solutions for poor farmers, who suffer from chronically low-yielding crops largely because of degraded soils.

"We are living through the most significant global economic crisis of a generation. Even before this crisis, almost one in six already lived in hunger and poverty. That number is now rising. Another 100 million people have been added over the last year. This reverses a previous downward trend.” A wake-up call from Lannart Båge, President of the Internationa Fund for Agriculture Development.

According to the latest edition of the FAO's State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA), existing responsible fishing practices need to be more widely implemented and current management plans should be expanded to include strategies for coping with climate change.