Volatility In Global Agriculture Needs To Be Addressed By The World’s Brightest

IT and Internet companies (e.g., Apple, Google) are grabbing a lot of media attention lately, but hardly anybody is paying attention to agricultural activity, which is “breaking records”, according to The Atlantic’s Moisés Naím. Worldwide wheat production is at the highest levels ever, and farms and granaries are over-flowing, mainly because high prices have encouraged farmers to boost cultivation. High prices are the result of population growth, increased food consumption in poor countries, the use of grains to make fuels, and frequent extreme climate events. Lower prices will lead to production declines -- the cycle continues. The key problem, Naím says, is that greater food-related volatility will lead to social and geopolitical instability affecting millions of people globally. He suggests that the geniuses in high tech might want to try solving the puzzle.