Food Production Must Increase 70 Percent By 2050: U.N.

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A 70 percent increase in global food production will be needed to feed the 9.1 billion people who will be on the Earth in 2050, says the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Currently, the world's population is 6.8 billion.

While the FAO said it was "cautiously optimistic about the world's potential to feed itself by 2050," there will be a number of significant challenges, said FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem, Agence France Presse reported.

In its forecast, the FAO said most of the world's population growth will occur in developing countries. "Sub-Saharan Africa's population is expected to grow the fastest (up 108 percent, 910 million people), and East and South East Asia's the slowest (up 11 percent, 228 million)."

The FAO also predicted that about 70 percent of the world's population will live in cities or urban areas by 2050, compared with 49 percent today, AFP reported.