ENOUGH TO FEED 9.5 BILLION

When Nestlé Chairman Peter Brabeck speaks, we should all listen. I’ve often found his words the wisest of all on world food supplies and sustainability. This time, talking to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he warns that higher food prices are here to stay, but he also offers solutions for the future. One is “no food for fuel”, describing agricultural production dedicated to biofuel as madness. A second is better use of existing production science – “With current techniques, including gene technology, one could feed up to 9.5 billion people,” he argues. The third is safeguarding free and open markets without arbitrary trade bans. All three make sense to me.