Smith in the City seminar – The challenge of feeding 9-10 billion people

The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment together with UBS has hosted its first “Smith in the City” evening seminar. The series will profile leading thinkers from around the globe looking at some of the major issues and challenges facing the world’s economies and people.

The series launched on Wednesday 22nd February 2012 and was introduced by Professor Sir David King, when Professor Charles Godfray, Hope Professor of Entomology at the University of Oxford, looked at “The challenge of feeding 9-10 billion people sustainably and equitably.”

In this first seminar in the series, Professor Godfray explained how demand for food will rise dramatically over the next couple of decades as populations grow and become richer. At the same time, the food system will face supply-side challenges from increasing competition for water, land and energy, as well as the growing risk of climate change. Much of food production today is environmentally unsustainable and nearly a billion people go to bed hungry each night. Though the challenges are massive it is possible to feed the 9-10 billion people sustainably and equitably, but only if we make radical changes to the food system. Professor Godfray explored these issues, including the role of the financial sector in helping achieve these goals.

The next seminar will take place on Thursday 26 April 2012; and will be given by Dr Angela Wilkinson, Futures Director at SSEE, on the topic ‘Enterprise and Environment: the Futures Agenda’.

For information on the whole series, please visit our microsite.

To view the recording from the seminar, click here.