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A major Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) says the key to food security is to farm smarter, not to plow more land.

The strains on agriculture are growing as the global population rises and emerging economies demand more types of food.

Frank Rijsberman, CEO of CGIAR noted,“Agriculture had been neglected for several decades. We had become used to abundant and cheap food. The world got a wake-up call in 2008, ’10, ’11 with spikes in food prices. People realised that we have to produce an awful lot more food for a growing world population, as much as 70% by 2050,”

The world population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, an increase of 2 billion from the current level. However, to feed that many people, is it simply a matter of planting more seeds on more land?

Rijsberman explained; “No, actually, that’s the wrong way to go. Crop yields – the amount of crop that we get per hectare has plateaued. It is no longer increasing. The only thing farmers can do is indeed plow under more land and they are doing that at an alarming pace.

They are doing that now more rapidly than during the green revolution. But if they do that they’re going to plow under marginal lands, key environmental areas. That would be quite disastrous and not a long-term sustainable path,” he said.

He said the key is research to learn how to get greater crop output from existing agricultural land. That’s one of the main goals of CGIAR.

“There’s a lot of private sector research in agriculture, but that serves primarily the big commercial farmers. We are serving the smallholder farmers – the 500 million farmers on less than two hectares – that provide most of the food in developing countries,” he said.

A second goal is to get the latest research into the hands of smallholder farmers as quickly as possible. Information such as ways to better access markets and reduce post-harvest loses.

Another is to address the issues of climate change, nutrition and gender, since women account for much if not most of the agricultural production around the world.

Rijsberman said while recent spikes in food prices may not hit consumers very hard in developed countries, they can have a devastating effect in poor countries.

In 2013, Facebook smartphone will be available to clients of the Social networking giant.

In 2010, facebook was reported to have been “secretly” building a smartphone – although this particular project is said to have broken down.

Facebook recently admitted it was struggling to make money out of its growing mobile audience.

It is in this regard that the Facebook had been hiring several smartphone engineers—as noted by some facebook employees.

It is also said that Facebook has hired experts who worked on the iPhone and other smartphones.

Facebook recently floated on the stock market, has also just launched its own mobile application store.

The App Center currently offers links to Facebook-enabled apps within Apple’s iOS and Google Android stores but developers will soon be able to write apps to be placed exclusively in Facebook’s store.

It quoted a Facebook employee as saying the site’s founder Mark Zuckerberg was “worried that if he doesn’t create a mobile phone in the near future… Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms”.

There are high chances of developing a new male contraceptive pill after researchers in Edinburgh identified a gene critical for the production of healthy sperm.

Experiments in mice found that the gene, Katnal1, was vital for the final stages of making sperm.

The authors of a study in PLos Genetics say a drug, which interrupts Katnal1, could be a reversible contraceptive. A fertility expert said there was “certainly a need” for such a drug.

Contraception in men is largely down to condoms or a vasectomy. Researchers at the Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Edinburgh were investigating the causes of male infertility.

They randomly altered the genetic code of mice to see which became infertile. They then traced the mutations that led to infertility, which led them to Katnal1.

It contains the blueprints for a protein that is important in cells, which support the development of sperm. Without the protein, sperm do not fully form and the body disposes of them.

Scientists hope they will be able to perform a similar trick in humans to stop sperm developing, without causing lasting damage.

One of the researchers Dr Lee Smith said: “If we can find a way to target this gene in the testes, we could potentially develop a non-hormonal contraceptive.

“The important thing is that the effects of such a drug would be reversible because Katnal1 only affects sperm cells in the later stages of development, so it would not hinder the early stages of sperm production and the overall ability to produce sperm.

He said it would be “relatively difficult” to do as the protein lives inside cells, however, he said there was “potential” to find something else that protein worked with, which might be an easier target.