cultivar_22_Final_EN

15 Sustainable Intensification: a new technological model in agriculture* José Lima Santos Full professor at the School of Agriculture (ISA), University of Lisbon Feeding a world of 9-10 billion people with more demanding average con- sumption patterns than today is a challenge that we will face globally by 2050. Overcoming this implies ensuring people’s access to food, an aim we are far from achieving and which therefore constitutes our most pressing task. It also implies cutting food waste, from field to plate, and considerably raising global food production. Attaining the necessary rise in production by sim- ply expanding the area of cultivated land would have unacceptable costs in terms of tropical deforestation, bio- diversity loss, destruction of crucial ecosystem systems and CO 2 emissions. Con- sequently, any acceptable solution will also mean more intensive farming, i.e. higher production per hectare on land currently cul- * Editor’s note: Originally published in CULTIVAR issue 3 – Healthy and sustainable eating, March 2016, p. 13, as “Intensificação sustentável: um novo modelo tecnológico na agricultura” https://www.gpp.pt/images/GPP/O_que_disponibilizamos/Publicacoes/CULTIVAR_3/E_book/CULTIVAR_3_Alimentacao_sustentavel_e_ saudavel/14/ tivated, to reduce the pressure to convert natural ecosystems into new cultivated land. The agricultural intensification of the past spared a lot of land for nature, biodiversity conservation and the main- tenance and continuity of ecological processes we depend upon and which today we call “ecosystem services”. In fact, without the agricultural intensifica- tion of the past, we would probably be in a far weaker position as regards both food security and ecosystem ser- vices. However, past agricultural intensification was based on the growing use of industrial inputs, such as synthetic chemical fertilisers, pesti- cides, energy and irrigation. These are used to transform the agricultural environment and to make it more favourable to the growth of half a dozen genetically … without the agricultural intensification of the past, we would probably be in a far weaker position as regards both food security and ecosystem services. However, past agricultural intensification was based on the growing use of industrial inputs… favourable to the growth of half a dozen genetically improved plant varieties that raise productivity but require more artificial agroecosystems than traditional varieties.