The world population continues to grow at about 1.5% a year. The projected figure of 7 billion for last year was reached and the UN statistics are pointing towards 8 billion for 2020. In addition, emerging world economies are undergoing significant changes in their diet. In the forthcoming decades we will therefore have to double our food production on less land per capita, with less water, often under limiting and highly variable environmental conditions.
Today in most developed countries, farmers are ageing and new generations of students are not attracted to agricultural studies. This is an alarming issue in the OECD countries, where agricultural knowledge is advancing significantly, yet not being transferred via the higher education system at an equal pace. The lack of understanding between agriculture and society as a whole is a concern for the higher education community, which has to reflect on how to improve the image of agriculture and to make it more realistic and attractive to the modern-day urban population. In the non-European Mediterranean countries, as in most other developing countries, high school graduates are still interested in agricultural studies.
The aim of the conference was to convene top-level experts from different areas of the world to hold a discussion and propose recommendations for the future development of curricula in Agriculture and Life Sciences to face current global challenges for food production. The Conference related to agriculture in its broadest definition, namely the food and non-food value chains relating to agriculture, forestry, food and natural resources, with due regard to rural development and the environment.


Options Méditerranéennes was originally a two-monthly Review and developed into a set of collective works arranged in several series: Studies, Mediterranean Seminars, Studies and Research and Cahiers Options Méditerranéennes.

Since 2008, the issues have been arranged in two series:

Series A – Mediterranean Seminars
Series B – Studies and Research