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Our main challenge during the coming decades is not to use more investment and greater physical inputs in order to increase food production but rather to pick up a great deal of slack that exists throughout our food system. By reducing significant inefficiencies in the use of fertilizers, irrigation water and pesticides, by cutting down unacceptably high post-harvest losses and by matching more closely actual food needs and availability we could substantially increase our food supply without any new inputs and with beneficial consequences for the environment as well as for human health.
Vaclav Smil (Mon,) studied this question.