Rome, Italy:

The Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) director-general, Jacques Diouf has called for a second Green Revolution to feed the world's growing population while preserving natural resources and the environment.

Addressing a meeting of the World Affairs Council of Northern California in San Francisco on September 12, Dr. Diouf said: "In the next few decades, a major international effort is needed to feed the world when the population soars from six to nine billion. We might call it a second Green Revolution."

Original revolution

The San Francisco-based World Affairs Council of Northern California, which has 10,000 members, is one of the United States' leading non-governmental fora for discussion and debate of international affairs.

The original Green Revolution of the '50s and '60s doubled world food production by bringing the power of science to agriculture, but "relied on the lavish use of inputs such as water, fertiliser and pesticides," Dr. Diouf said.

"The task ahead may well prove harder," he continued. "We not only need to grow an extra one billion tonnes of cereals a year by 2050 - within the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren - but do so from a diminishing resource base of land and water in many of the world's regions, and in an environment increasingly threatened by global warming and climate change."

Fundamental role

FAO, as the United Nations specialised agency for food and agriculture, looked set to have a fundamental role in helping bring about such a revolution, Dr. Diouf said. The place to start was at village level and in developing countries themselves, he added.

"Investing in agriculture is usually low in the order of priorities of politicians, typically more interested in short-term returns," Dr. Diouf said. "But we can no longer afford such neglect - our future depends on it."