"How can we feed the growing population sustainably?"

All animals on the planet must eat. Whether we are vegetarians, omnivores or carnivores, the food chains for all land animals begin with plants. The world's human population is over eight billion people, and we all need food. Human food production requires huge amounts of fresh water and uses enormous areas of land, with half of the world’s habitable land already used by agriculture.

As we use more land for farming, we lose forests and wilderness and reduce biodiversity. Agriculture is also responsible for a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, helping to drive climate change, rising carbon dioxide levels and a warming world. Changing rainfall patterns mean that some areas now receive too much water and others not enough. These factors are reducing food crop yields, not only of key crops like maize, wheat and rice but all plants, including chocolate, coffee and sugar.

Advanced crop genetic engineering and new seed development are helping keep things growing for the moment, but as climate change advances and the human population continues to grow, new ways of intensively producing food need to be developed (without using any more precious land).