Doug Bereuter, who represented Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District from 1979-2004, will present the 2014 Sorensen Lecture, “Can the World Feed Nine Billion People? Implications for Nebraska” at 7 p.m., Oct. 19 in the Hardin Hall auditorium (room 107). The seminar is free and open to the public.

The lecture will address the broad question of whether the world can produce enough nutritious food to feed a population that is conservatively estimated to increase from the current seven billion people to a population of more than nine billion by 2050. It will highlight the pressing and generally under-appreciated food security challenges facing the world, including the trade and access problems of food supplies and agricultural inputs, the necessity of enhancing nutrition in the food supplies, the prospects for political turmoil and conflict caused by food shortages and price volatility, and the adaptation and mitigation initiatives required to cope with climate change and increased weather volatility. With respect to the latter in particular, Bereuter expects to consider and build upon the Sep. 25 Heuermann Lecture at UNL that presented the university’s much-anticipated report, “Understanding and Assessing Climate Change: Implications for Nebraska.”