This is the short edition of Morales, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.

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Hello and welcome to Morales on the BBC World Service,

the programme which investigates the numbers in the news and in the world around us.

I'm Ruth Alexander.

This week we're looking at how much food we'll need to produce to feed the world's population

over the next 40 years.

Listener Rob Ryan Silver from Maryland in the US emailed us at Morales at

bbc.co.uk to ask.

A recent article in the economist includes the claim that in the next 40 years

humans will need to produce more food than they did in the previous 10,000 put together.

This seems improbable. Would you invest again?

Let's look back to 10,000 years ago.

The dawn of agriculture, when the human diet progressed from just a handful of nuts and berries

to bread, pasta, cornflakes.

I don't think they had cornflakes, Ruth.

This is our razor sharp reporter, Hannah Moore.

You've been looking into this claim from the economist.

I have. It's actually a quote that's been bandied about a lot.

Over the past few years it's appeared in the Guardian, the LA Times.

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