Nutrients For Life

Over the next 30 years, the United Nations (UN) projects there will be an increase of about 2.2 billion people on the planet. With the world population increasing so quickly, and improving global standards of living, the importance of securing enough food to provide everyone with the same type of high quality diet that we take for granted in Canada will become an even greater concern in the coming years.

The ability to meet the growing demand for more diverse diets will also be a challenge as millions of new consumers each year switch from rice to meat based diets, and to diets that are rich in fruits and vegetables. Nutrients play a crucial role because they replenish the soil to allow for the production of a variety of abundant and nutritious food.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), nutrients are needed to help ensure the world's food security. "You cannot feed six billion people today and nine billion in 2050 without judicious use of chemical fertilizers," stated Dr. Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the FAO.

According to the FAO, plant nutrients could help significantly boost food production in Sub-Sahara Africa, where farmers use less than one tenth of the nutrients applied by their Asian counterparts.

The World Bank noted in its annual World Development Report that low fertilizer is one of the major constraints in increasing agricultural productivity in Sub-Sahara Africa.

The FAO acknowledges that there is no one solution to the problem of feeding the world's hungry and poor. Plant nutrients, however, will continue to play an important role in helping to ensure the world's food security in the years to come.