Management of food production to eradicate  hunger will now take a superhuman effort, one that goes far beyond agriculture. It may depend as much on the efforts of family planners as on farmers and as much on the decisions made in ministries of energy that shape future climate trends as on decisions made in ministries of agriculture.

Within agriculture, raising land productivity deserves even greater priority today than in the past. This means raising crop yields in biological terms wherever possible, including minor crops. It also means more multiple cropping, a potential not yet fully realized in all countries.

Given the constraints on crop yields imposed by inadequate soil moisture, raising water productivity is a key to further gains in land productivity. Governments running the risk of an abrupt drop in food production as a result of aquifer depletion, may be able to avoid such a situation only by simultaneously slowing population growth and raising water productivity in order to stabilize water tables.

Eradicating hunger also means getting more out of an existing harvest. It means increasing the efficiency with which the 35 percent of the world grain harvest that is fed to livestock, poultry and fish, is converted into animal protein. Simply put, it means eating less feedlot beef and less pork and more poultry and farmed fish. Within fish farming, it may also mean replacing fish monocultures with polycultures following the highly successful Chinese model. For the world's affluent, it means moving down the food chain by consuming less fat-rich livestock products, something they should be doing for health reasons anyway.

The second front is the educational level of women. As female educational levels rise, fertility falls. As women's education rises, the nutrition of their children improves, even if incomes do not rise, apparently because more education brings a better understanding of nutrition. We should be educating young women in developing countries as though future progress depends on it, because indeed it may.