Food production is becoming a major problem in the world as it needs to increase by 100 percent by 2050. But there will be a problem because only 70 percent will come from advances in technology, while the 30 percent will come from other sources like educating the public about what actually happens from the farm to your plate, recycling food waste, nutrition and an increase in food production farmers.

While many consumers think that they are well educated about what really goes into their food that is on their plate, they actually are misunderstood about everything that goes into producing.

Education can help increase food production because it can decrease how big our eyes to our stomachs are. Because everyone thinks they can eat more than what is on their plate, but they waste so much food that could have fed another person a meal.

Another topic of education is closing the gap between how the public sees and antibiotics and hormones in animals and what really is in their food that is on their plate.

Most think that is it bad to inject antibiotics and hormones, but animals need antibiotics and, when it comes time to slaughter, those antibiotics are so far gone or diluted down to not even be noticed, and there are certain withdrawal dates on the drugs and you cannot slaughter an animal within that time frame or it could be bad for the consumer and they could get sick. That is what consumer think is they don’t fully understand the whole withdrawal date and just assume the worst.

While consumers eat the food that they want, they normally throw away so much food that could people others. But with education and recycling the food waste it can help increase food production by decreasing the amount of food we have to feed the animals and just recycle the food and feed the animals.

In a TED Talk that I was able to watch, Mike Rowe explained how one pig farmer near Las Vegas, Nevada used the recycled waste from casinos to feed the pigs. That would increase the amount of food that is used for the public rather than the animals. So that will be a small percentage to increase food production.

So many people do not understand how many people it actually takes to produce a single product from the farm to your plate. There is a 0.3% of people in this world that are farmers of production agriculture, and that is a very small amount that has to feed this world by 2050. They will not be able to do it alone, so there will need to be an increase in production farmers. You do not have to be a corn, wheat, or soybean farmer to be involved in production agriculture.

There are so many other ways to be involved such as a tree harvester because they produce wood or paper products for farmers to keep track of their products that they produce. So many individual things have to happen in order to have food on your plate, and it takes so much money also.

One major thing for cattle producers is that they must pass a certain inspection which is mandatory and paid for by the public by the USDA on their meats in order for it to be considered for market at certain restaurants and certain food markets, to make sure there are no foodborne illness that could occur if meats are not properly inspected.

There are many ways that people can be educated and even get involved by joining the ag industry and realizing how much it actually takes to make the food that is on your plate. While these will help with increasing food production, the public needs to wake up about how we treat these people and understand how much work actually goes it producing food for consumers.