Long term analyses have been carried out at FAO since the early 1960s, with the goal of offering a strategic policy perspective, and contributing to defining internal policy priorities to respond to external and emerging challenges. Popular publications have been the series of reports titled "World Agriculture Towards 20XX" which started with 2000 as base year and were updated to 2050 in the latest revision (Alexandratos and Bruinsma, 2012). These studies have heavily relied on the wide and diverse expertise within FAO, which has informed core projections on demand, supply and resource use.

Since 2012 efforts have been underway to complement this methodology in order to accommodate scenario analysis. Consensus emerged that studying alternative scenarios elucidates the sensitivity of any baseline to assumptions and to assess normative propositions. The FAO's  Global Perspectives Studies Team has developed a partial equilibrium model - Global Agricultural Projections System (GAPS)-, similar to IFPRI's  IMPACT model, which, among other objectives, can re-produce the projections of Alexandratos and Bruinsma (2012) when calibrating its dynamic parameters to this baseline. On-going work focuses on improving specific components of this model.