Within the next 80 years, the world’s population is expected to top 11 billion, creating a rise in global food demand — and presenting an unavoidable challenge to food production and distribution.
Within the next 80 years, the world’s population is expected to top 11 billion, creating a rise in global food demand — and presenting an unavoidable challenge to food production and distribution.
But a new article published in Nature Sustainability describes how the increase in population and the need to feed everyone will also, ultimately, give rise to human infectious disease, a situation the authors of the paper consider “two of the most formidable ecological and public health challenges of the 21st century.”
The article, “Emerging human infectious disease and the links to global food production,” is the first to draw connections between future population growth, agricultural development and infectious disease.
“If we start exploring how increasing population and agriculture will affect human diseases, we can prepare for and mitigate these effects,” said Jason Rohr, the Ludmilla F., Stephen J. and Robert T. Galla College Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. “We need to anticipate some of the problems that may arise from an explosion of human population in the developing world.”
Read more at: University of Notre Dame
Jason Rohr, the Ludmilla F., Stephen J. and Robert T. Galla College Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. (Photo Credit: University of Notre Dame)
