Rising competition for many of the world’s important crops is sending increasing amounts toward uses other than directly feeding people. These competing uses include making biofuels; converting crops into processing ingredients, such as livestock meal, hydrogenated oils and starches; and selling them on global markets to countries that can afford to pay for them.
University of Minnesota senior research scientist Deepak Ray, along with global collaborators, mapped crop harvests for seven end-uses and found that harvests for direct food use will be insufficient to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 2 (S