World agriculture in focus in the UK

摘要

"The second leg of my Nuffield journey took me to the United Kingdom for the Contemporary Scholars Conference where all the 2009 Nuffield Scholars from Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, France and Zimbabwe gathered for the week. The focus of the conference was on the global issues facing agriculture: food security and the environment. We also had the opportunity to learn about some of the history of Europe and the political systems in place. During the middle ages, the world population was estimated at about half a billion people. Currently we have a population of about six billion and the consensus forecast is for a world population of nine billion by 2050. We have consumed more resources in the past 200 years than in the previous 2.5 million years.