Today is Earth Day. The Global Harvest Initiative and its partner companies and organizations are proud to celebrate and commemorate the significance of this day to millions of people around the world.

While it may be cliché - "every day is Earth Day for farmers" - and those of us engaged in agriculture. We love the land. We dedicate ourselves daily to conserving as much of it as possible, understanding that global agriculture - farmers - must produce more with less if are to feed the 9 billion people who are expected to inhabit the Earth in the year 2050.

I think Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson understood that 40 years ago when the first Earth Day recognition was celebrated on April 22, 1970.

In a forward-looking dissertation titled Agriculture from 2000 to 2050 - The Business As Usual Scenario, Dr. Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund effectively argues that the "business as usual" model for food production is not sustainable as the global population explodes over the next 40 years.

Dr. Clay, who presented his paper last month at the Global Harvest Initiative 2010 Symposium, Closing the Gap: Examining an Alternative Future, proposes freezing the footprint of food by intensifying, not expanding production.

It's a compelling piece that also has been published in GHI's book Benefits of An Alternative Future. The most persuasive aspect of Dr. Clay's thesis is that it offers solutions for how we can feed the 9 billion people who will inhabit the Earth in 2050, while at the same time recognizing that we must be able to do in a way that sustains the planet. In other words, Dr. Clay urges that we need to do more with less impact on land and water resources.

Few would argue that now is the time for us to start thinking about how to meet the food demands of a growing global population with fewer natural resources as we advance toward the year 2050. A recurring Global Harvest Initiative theme has been to embrace a collective thought process to closing this looming productivity gap, and eschewing the idea of a "one-size-fits-all" approach to meeting this challenge.

With this blog, GHI has endeavored to engage and enlist divergence opinions about how global agriculture can address this issue in ways that encourages enterprise while understanding that we must move forward in a sustainable and environmentally-friendly way that is paramount to achieving the end of feeding the world's population 40 years down the road.

A good example of GHI's approach is our recently released, commissioned five-chapter study Benefits of an Alternative Future. Dr. Michel Petit, in his paper, Agriculture: A Reassessment Following Recent Controversies, deftly argues for an inclusive approach to meet the future global food demand.