Limited land is available globally to grow crops for food and fuel. There are direct and indirect pressures on forests and other lands to be converted from growing food for feedstock to be used for biofuel production. The balance of evidence indicates there will probably be sufficient appropriate land available to meet demands for both food and fuel, but this needs to be confirmed before the global supply of biofuel is allowed to increase significantly. There is a future for a sustainable biofuels industry, but feedstock production must avoid encroaching on agricultural land that would otherwise be used for food production. And while advanced technologies offer significant potential for higher greenhouse gas (GHG) savings through biofuels, these will be offset if feedstock production uses existing agricultural land and prevents land-use change. GHG savings can be achieved by using feedstock grown mainly on marginal land or that does not use land, such as wastes and residues (although this may compete with other uses of these materials). To ensure that biofuels deliver net GHG benefits, governments should amend, but not abandon, their biofuel policies in recognition of the dangers from indirect effects of land-use changes. Large areas of uncertainty remain in the overall impacts and benefits of biofuels. International action is needed in order to improve data, models and controls, and to understand and to manage effects.

World food demand is expected to more than double in the next 50 years. During this time, our planet will likely undergo dramatic climate change that will impose new challenges on our capacity to maintain even current levels of food production let alone meet the anticipated demand. All of us at this conference were born and raised during the last century when the globe experienced a doubling of the human population. Little did we know then how our lives would depend on the remarkable increase in global food production that characterises that century, an increase underwritten by astonishing advances in genetics and agricultural science. Nor did we realise that the 20th century expansion of the global larder came at such great environmental cost, a cost born largely by the conversion of natural ecosystems to agriculture with the resulting destruction of the essential services those ecosystems provide. Genetics has always been the currency for assuring population success in changing environments. Although technology alone will be insufficient, the development and application of new advanced genetic technologies will be absolutely necessary to feed the world our children and grandchildren will know as their own. The EnviropigTM represents a model of environmental-genetic innovation with the potential to dramatically enhance the sustainability of animal agriculture in an increasingly hungry world intoxicated by its own waste.

Wheat is one of the most critical food crops. Globally wheat yield has been growing slower than wheat demand. Further improvements in yield are required. Due to environmental concerns, much of these improvements must come from genetic gains. As wheat yield potential is expressed across a wide range of environments, breeding cultivars of higher-yield potential than that of most modern cultivars is critical. The challenge is that the main physiological avenues for improving yield in the future must be different than that on which past breeding (including the “green revolution”) was based. Major improvements in yield potential were achieved by increased harvest index based on plant height reduction, but any further reductions in plant height would bring about yield penalties rather than gains. In this paper I will discuss alternative opportunities for future improvements beyond modifications in height or partitioning of dry matter.

The enhanced metabolic efficiency of aquatic animals such as fish and crustaceans over terrestrial homotherms includes the fact that they do not expend energy for body temperature regulation and excretion of toxic ammonia (without the need of synthesising its non-toxic derivatives). Therefore, utilisation of dietary nutrients for body deposition/growth can be higher in fish than in domestic mammals or birds. There is evidence that seafood quality can be enhanced by using specifically modified diets for cultured fish while simultaneously avoiding environmental pollutants in controlled farming. The question remains if fish can utilise feed stuffs of plant, bacterial, or yeast origin with low nutrient concentrations.