Giving agriculture a global do-over could feed nearly a billion more people.

Giving agriculture a global do-over could feed nearly a billion more people. Globally optimizing which crops we grow where cuts water use and feeds more people. As the human population grows and the human middle class grows in developing countries, we are going to need more. More food, more meat, more energy and producing more is going to require more resources. Since we are just about tapped out of the resources required for food production—namely water and land—we are going to have to figure out how to use these limited resources as efficiently as possible. A number of suggestions have been made to try to achieve this, from the lower tech—like curbing animal consumption and minimizing food waste—to the higher tech, like planting GMOS that might improve yields, developing better fertilizers, and maximizing irrigation efficiency. A new analysis in Nature Geoscience offers up one more: switching what we grow where.