Fruit Tree Diversity And Fruit Consumption

Food is one of the basic necessities in humans’ lives, and it is undeniably considered to be the most important one of all. Evidently, the importance of having sustainable food resources that can also accommodate large populations is most desirable and has existed for more than 12,000 years ago when humans first begin to farm. The development and the desire of commercial farming that we have today are a direct result of the increasing demands in global food supplies due to the increasing world populations, which has been growing at an alarming pace since 1950s with the astonishing rate of 100 percent between 1959 (3 billion) and 1999 (6 billion).

“There are many future challenges to increasing food production globally, including slowing agricultural productivity growth, the impacts of climate change, and increased competition for scarce resources such

Food production shortage: one of the planet’s most prominent future issues. Today, most of the world’s agriculture and farming is able to keep up with the over seven billion people residing on Earth, but the future suggests problems. “The world is less than 40 years away from a food shortage that will have serious implications for people and governments, according to a top scientist at the U.S. Agency for International Development.” (Texas A&M AgriLife Communications). This hypothesis is based upon the exponential population growth that is occurring on Earth and that food production may not be able to supply people efficiently.

Agricultural Cycles: People who rely on fruits and vegetables that they produce for household food consumption (subsistence farmers) often go through cycles of relative abundance and scarcity. For many families that rely on subsistence production for survival, the period immediately prior to harvest is a 'hungry period. ' During these periods of scarcity, many families lack sufficient resources to meet their minimal nutritional needs. Being familiar with these cycles has enabled development practitioners to anticipate and prepare for periods of acute need for assistance.

People do still not have enough food to eat. “Every minute in Africa, 12 people die from malnutrition.” (Senker 12). The population is rapidly decreasing due to lack of malnutrition. Food is readily available in many countries, but in the places where there are food losses, people are suffering major consequences such as death, severely malnourished, and underweight. Even though efforts are being made, it is still not enough to save everybody in need of saving from the bad conditions they are in today. The efforts may help for now, but in the future, nothing will save these need

Food security is said to be attained when “all people are able to access enough safe and nutritious food to meet their requirements for a healthy life”. However, food security is challenged by various factors across production and consumption. Food production, trade, the environmental impact of agriculture, the threat of climate change, and the factors that affect food prices are all largely global in nature – there is no single solution that any one country can enact to ensure access to affordable, sustainable, safe and nutritious food for all.

By the end of this century, the planet world will be home to more than 11 billion people. Feeding all of them in a truly sustainable way remains undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges of this generation. The population boom is sometimes feared as one of the major leading problems to the food security and malnutrition issue; this essay analysis shows that the reasons many suspects are not entirely true; it’s not the number, nor is it about enough land. The world has already what’s required to produce enough food, but doing it at an acceptable cost to the planet will depend on dramatic changes from how we eat, what we grow and how we do it. There is a need driven by the global political will to adopt and incorporate best ideas and strategies from successful existing and previous practices; green revolution, small-large agriculture, organic and local agriculture all combined with new innovations systems that focus on sustainable food production.

Although Africa has the potential to become a global agricultural powerhouse, it has not realized this potential. The continent has large arable land resources, but nearly 80% remains uncultivated. Instead, Africa imports roughly US$ 30 billion in agricultural products every year and the international competitiveness of African agricultural exports has deteriorated over the past 30 years. The resulting, repeated food crises in many parts of the continent underline the need for urgent action to address the root causes of food insecurity in Africa.

Growth and productivity of guava is affected by various factors including tree age, planting densities, cultivation, insect, pests, diseases and mineral nutrition (Hammami et al., 2010). Reasons that are responsible for low guava production in Pakistan include poor management, severe attack of fruit fly on summer crop, post-harvest losses and occurrence of cross pollination. Food productivity is decreasing due to detrimental effects of various biotic and abiotic stresses; therefore minimizing these losses is a major area of concern to ensure food security under changing climate. Environmental abiotic stresses, such as drought, extreme temperature, cold, heavy metals, or high salinity, severely impair plant growth and productivity worldwide.

Chapter 3: A survey on planted and unplanted fruit tree diversity for improve fruit supply in areas with increasing deforestation in Cameroon

CAADP, 2013. Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program East and Central Africa Regional Nutrition Program Development Workshop.

The world’s population is projected to grow to 9 billion from existing 7 billion by the year 2050. To accommodate the dietary needs of the population, the world’s food production must be increased by about 70% to close that gap. [1] The agricultural sector will face the following significant challenges to achieve this production capacity: While the amount of arable land cannot increase without creating further ecological imbalance, it competes with urbanization, industrial and bio-energy needs. Unreliable weather and changing climate conditions is causing temperature fluctuations, affects availability of fresh water for irrigation (through rainfall, ground water or other waterbodies) and reduced soil fertility. Poorly managed supply chain accounts for a loss of about 1/3rd of the world’s food production. In addition, there is a labor shift away from agriculture in favor for higher paying jobs in urban areas. [2]

Today, the world population stands about 7.3 billion (1) and the expected world population by 2050 is about 9.8 Billion (2). According to bureau statistics, the earth produces enough food to feed 6 billion people today (3). In the other hand, 840 million people including 200 children are starving in this moment (3). If the current food production do not get increased, the more number of people are going to suffer from starvation in the future. Increasing the food production is not a very easy task because of the challenges which agriculture faces today. Developed

“In our country, whenever we are, we should bear in mind that solving the food problem is the foundation(Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping)”. China is the most populous country in the world. According to the publication of preliminary data from the sixth China’s census in 2016, China’s population has up to 1.35 billion. And it is still growing with the 0.57% of the average annual growth rate. Besides this, land to plant is becoming fewer and fewer. More land is utilized for housing and other uses. Because of the massive population, cultivated land problem and other reasons, food supplies is always a big problem that we can’t

There is an existing link between agriculture and the attainment of sustainable development. Popular literature provides that good agriculture impact positively on the sustainability of the global ecosystem; which means that the needs of the present generation are met without compromising the ability for future generations to meet theirs. Hence, good agricultural practices, essentially promote the realization of sustainability. As a matter of fact, according to Toenniessen, Adesina & DeVries (2008), the realization of sustainability, especially in developed and least developed nations, cannot be achieved in the absence of increased farm productivity. A key aspect of sustainability is food security. Nevertheless, as LaSalle, Hepperly & Diop (2008) state, feeding the world has always proven to be a challenge, especially in the context of the current prevailing high prices brought about by the recent economic slowdown. The Economist (2011) further increases the dilemma for food security, citing the likelihood for global population rising from 7 billion to 9 billion, thereby casting a dingy decadence on the availability of food.