A/HRC/25/57 dedicated to agriculture, encouraged for instance by the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme under the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD); increases in the share of development cooperation budgets going to agriculture, through bilateral and multilateral channels; initiatives such as Scaling Up Nutrition; and the renewed interest of the private sector in agricultural investment. However, while governmental and non-governmental actors agree on the need for reform, disagreements persist on the way forward. 14. Many view productivity improvements in agriculture as key to addressing hunger and malnutrition. This approach is still as influential today as it was in the 1960s, in part because of increasing demand for agricultural production (for both food and non-food uses) and the anticipated further increases as a result of population growth, higher incomes, and shifting diets linked to urbanization. Thus, FAO estimated in 2009 that a 70 per cent increase in global agricultural production was required by 2050 in comparison to the levels of 2005–2007, taking into account an annual average growth in gross domestic product (GDP) of 2.4 per cent between 2030 and 2050 and assuming that about 290 million people would still be undernourished by 2050. This estimate was widely cited to justify investments in technology-based solutions to respond to a challenge presented as a primarily quantitative one. 15. Given the threats that food systems face, particularly those linked to climate change and soil degradation, and given the potential of productivity improvements to raise the incomes of small-scale food producers, investments in raising productivity are needed. However, a narrow focus on improved productivity risks ignoring the wide range of other variables that foresight exercises should take into account.18 Moreover, the deeper debate concerns not whether productivity should be raised, but how to achieve this. Increasing yields alone will not do. Any prescription to increase yields that ignores the need to transition to sustainable production and consumption, and to reduce rural poverty, will not only be incomplete; it may also have damaging impacts, worsening the ecological crisis and widening the gap between different categories of food producers. A. Sustainable production 16. Food systems are not only at great risk from climate change; as noted above, they also are a major contributor to the emissions of greenhouse gases that are responsible for such changes. This is one major reason why a shift to agroecological modes of production is urgently called for (see A/HRC/16/49). As a way to improve the resilience and sustainability of food systems, agroecology is now supported by an increasingly broad part of the scientific community.19 It features prominently in the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development20 and in 18 19 20 8 See, for example, Agrimonde: Scenarios and Challenges for Feeding the World in 2050, (INRA (French National Institute for Agricultural Research) and CIRAD (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development), 2009); and T. Wise and K. Sundell, Rising to the Challenge: Changing Course to Feed the World in 2050 (ActionAid USA, 2013). A. Wezel and V. Soldat, “A quantitative and qualitative historical analysis of the scientific discipline of agroecology”, International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, vol. 7, No. 1 (2009), pp. 3–18. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, “Summary for decision-makers of the global report” (April 2008), finding 7.