The world population in 2024 is slightly less than 8.2 billion from the population of 2.5 billion in 1952, a wolfing increase of 5.7 billion people over 72 years.
This analysis is made from the information obtained from Worldmeters (http://www.worldometers. info/ ).
The Worldometers is one of the respectable organizations that presents estimated world population based on statistics and projections from the most reputable official organizations such as the United Nations Population Division, World Health Organisation (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank.
Population in the world is growing at around 0.87 per cent per year in 2024 (from 0.88 per cent in 2023 and down from 0.97 per cent in 2020 and 1.05 per cent in 2019).
The current population increase is estimated at around 71 million people per year, with an estimated population of 9.6 billion people in 2050. Many countries have a yearly population increase rate much higher than the global average.
As of the time of writing this piece, Sunday, November 9th, 2024, the population of Nigeria is 234,414,855 based on the latest United Nations estimates.
Nigeria’s population is equivalent to 2.85 per cent of the total world population. Presently, Nigeria ranks number 7 on the list of countries by population. The population density in Nigeria is 215 per square Kilometer, and the total land area is 910,770 square kilometers.
The Nigerian population is predicted to be 450 million in the year 2050, making it the third most populous country in the world after China and India.
Food production to feed the teeming population is an enormous challenge for many developing countries like Nigeria, especially as more than half of the Nigerian population (51 per cent) lives in urban areas.
This makes farming even more difficult due to competing land demands in the metropolitan areas. The current insecurity situation has exacerbated the food insecurity.
Globally, the agricultural sector will face enormous challenges in feeding this ever-increasing population.
According to experts, food production must increase to 70 per cent by 2050, and this has to be achieved despite the limited availability of arable lands and the increasing need for freshwater by many competing issues (industries, domestics, and Agriculture).
Agriculture consumes 70 percent of the world’s freshwater supply. This is because producing one kilogram of meat requires between 5,000 and 20,000 liters of water, and similarly, producing a kilogram of food crop requires between 500 and 4,000 liters of water depending on the climatic condition of the production environment.
In addition, agriculture faces other less predictable factors, such as the impact of climate change, which, according to a recent report by the UN, could lead, among other things, to changes in seasonal events in the life cycle of plants and animals.
In Nigeria, the impact of climate change has already been witnessed in recent years. Nevertheless, many efforts are being made to develop agriculture at all levels globally.
Despite these efforts to achieve food security over the past decades, about 800 million undernourished and 1 billion malnourished people worldwide remain.
At the same time, more than 1.4 billion adults are overweight, and one-third of all food produced is wasted.
At the same time, global food consumption trends are changing drastically; for example, increasing affluence is driving demand for more meat-rich diets.
This is evident even in Nigeria, where one considers the diets of the average household from twenty years ago to now. The massive adoption of improved technologies is an easy pathway for the world to achieve food sufficiency.
The most potent technologies that could address production constraints and increase the quality and quantity of agricultural production are “precision agriculture,” also known as “smart farming.”
