Food Production ‘Must Rise 70%’ Over the Next 40 Years
October 13th, 2009Via: BBC:
Food production will have to increase by 70% over the next 40 years to feed the world’s growing population, the United Nations food agency predicts.
The Food and Agricultural Organisation says if more land is not used for food production now, 370 million people could be facing famine by 2050.
The world population is expected to increase from the current 6.7 billion to 9.1 billion by mid-century.
Climate change, involving floods and droughts, will affect food production.
The FAO said net investments of $83bn (£52.5bn) a year – an increase of 50% – had to be made in agriculture in developing countries if there was to be enough food by 2050.
Research Credit: R
I have had lengthy discussions about this one. Obviously, food production & population growth are heavily correlated. Both are also heavily correlated with energy production. My position is that overpopulation is the mother of all problems. And increasing the food production – as history has taught us – is certainly not the solution.
Increasing food production in fact creates a much larger problem for future generations. What is needed is a managed decline in population (preferably in a humane way, and not by means of slow motion genocide as is being currently carried out), and a thorough rearrangement of the food distribution system so that even the poorest will have access to enough, good quality food.
These statements by FAO are merely to create support for GMO technology.
Reminder : correlation is NOT causation.
@ es : What do you have in mind when mentioning a “humane way” to manage a decline in population ?
Regarding the overpopulation concept, I guess a little math may help. Fifteen million square km of arable land (that’s 15,000 billion square meters) divided by – let’s say – 15 billion people makes 1000 sq meters of arable land per person.
One person needs approximately 2000 kcal per day (730,000 kcal per year).
Rice will give you 1250 kcal/sq m per year, so one individual will need approximately 600 square meters of rice crops to be self-sufficient on the food level. Beef will let us down though, as it only gives 130 kcal/sq m per year (5615 sq m per person).
Now I’m conscious that the beauty of math won’t help us on its own, but my opinion is that it’s way more urgent to try to feed the starving people (http://www.worldometers.info/ [have a look at the food section]) than trying to concentrate on how to eliminate the most of ’em.
sources :
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html
http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEPC/WWC/1991/land.php
@soothing hex; > Reminder : correlation is NOT causation.
This is exactly my point. Under our current food production and distribution system, there is always a certain percentage of hungry/poor. That means, by increasing the food production, you increase the absolute number of hungry/poor. Ergo, increasing food production CAUSES population growth and consequently causes more hunger/poverty in the absolute sense, unless you rethink the system under which the food is produced/distributed.
I’m afraid that your math doesn’t fly since arable land is not the only resource humans need to lead a healthy&happy life, and it is also not the bottleneck (I guess water is, but possibly also fossil fuels). What do you suggest, we all just keep multiplying ourselves until the ultimate limit has been reached?
As far as the concrete solution: I don’t have one. I guess it comes down to the self-regulating capabilities of local societies/communities.
Here are some solutions from those currently in power (judge for yourself):
– pharmaceutical medicine in general
– in particular (forced) vaccinations and hiv/aids medication
– debt slavery / income insecurity / fiscal matters; in combination with
– increased female workforce participation
I would like to add that according to FAO statistics the world currently produces around 15-20% more calories than needed on a per capita basis. Which supports the notion that we have a distribution problem rather than a production problem.
A strong correlation between food production and population growth can be explained in 4 ways : either these two variables are both caused by an external third variable, either food production explains population numbers (your hypothesis), either population figures determine food production (likely), either a mix of the above.
Regarding your remark on the necessity of non-arable land to human health and happiness, I might not understand your point. Arable land is about 10% of all land.
Water is definitely a topic worth digging. Desalinization has a high cost in energy, but will energy cost much in the near future ? And what’s the situation on the localized production front ?
To answer your question : world leaders’ problems are not ours. Do we have a say in any depopulation plan ? I’d suggest anybody plugged to the system to figure a way out of it for themselves, and let it be known to others if it’s successful.