Facts and figures

With current global trends and diets, 60 percent more food will be needed by 2050.
Yields of maize, rice, wheat and soybeans all need to increase by 60 percent by 2050.
About one-third of all food produced is lost in the food supply chain.

Over the next 50 years more food needs to be grown than has been produced in the 10,000 years since agriculture began.
There are about 1.2 billion poor who consume wheat as the main staple in their diet, and 2.5 billion wheat-consuming poor, living predominantly in Africa and Asia.
Worldwide, more land is used to grow wheat than any other crop.
Wheat has overtaken rice to become the second most-produced cereal after maize.
Wheat is the second most important cereal for direct human consumption (rather than for livestock feed) and the most significant global source of non-animal protein.
Around half of calories consumed in North Africa and West and Central Asia are from wheat.
In order to meet future demand the average annual increase in global wheat yield must jump from its current level of below 1 percent to at least 1.6 percent.
The wheat genome is 6 times larger than the human genome, 8 times larger than maize and 37 times larger than the rice genome.