Numerous times over the last 40 years so-called "experts" predicted global famine because increases in food production couldn’t possibly keep up with population growth. Thankfully, they were wrong.
The best indications today are that food production will continue to outpace population growth for the foreseeable future, though this doesn’t preclude localized famines since, as we shall see in a moment, famine in the 20th century is largely unrelated to the ability to produce enough food to feed the world.
The accomplishment in food production over the last 40 years was a result of the Green Revolution agricultural processes focusing on hybrid plants designed to maximize yield while being resistant to pests, and intensive irrigation and fertilizing efforts. As Denis Avery points out, in 1950 the world’s 611 million hectares of cropland produced 692 million tons of grain. By 1992, the world planted 700 million hectares of cropland which produced 1,920 million tons of grain. In spite of skeptics in the late 1960s and 1970s who predicted the effects of the Green Revolution would be minimal, agricultural output increased from 1.13 tons/hectare to 2.74 tons/hectare in four decades.
The best indications today are that food production will continue to outpace population growth for the foreseeable future, though this doesn’t preclude localized famines since, as we shall see in a moment, famine in the 20th century is largely unrelated to the ability to produce enough food to feed the world.
The accomplishment in food production over the last 40 years was a result of the Green Revolution agricultural processes focusing on hybrid plants designed to maximize yield while being resistant to pests, and intensive irrigation and fertilizing efforts. As Denis Avery points out, in 1950 the world’s 611 million hectares of cropland produced 692 million tons of grain. By 1992, the world planted 700 million hectares of cropland which produced 1,920 million tons of grain. In spite of skeptics in the late 1960s and 1970s who predicted the effects of the Green Revolution would be minimal, agricultural output increased from 1.13 tons/hectare to 2.74 tons/hectare in four decades.
The Green Revolution was so successful that the developed world now sees a glut of food. Many governments in the developed world now pay farmers to limit food production in order to increase prices. Even if population growth should increase along the lines of the worst case scenario, this underproduction could be converted quickly to meet the world’s food needs.
What makes the world increase in food production so much more amazing is that many parts of the world have yet to experience its effects. Development of Green Revolution-style techniques for Africa, for example, has lagged for a variety of reasons. The introduction of hybrid crops designed for the relatively poor soil of central Africa combined with farming techniques to maximize productivity of the land have yet to be extensively adopted on that continent. Such techniques could increase food production in Africa by a factor of 7 and allow that continent to finally be self-sufficient in its food production.
Unfortunately there may not be a lot we can do about the primary cause of famine and hunger in the
20th century -- government interference with food production.
All of the largest and most publicized famines of this century were the direct result not of inherent problems with food production but of government policies which discouraged proper production and distribution of food.
All of the largest and most publicized famines of this century were the direct result not of inherent problems with food production but of government policies which discouraged proper production and distribution of food.
In the 1980s famine in Ethiopia resulted from the government preventing food aid from reaching provinces rebelling against the government of Haile Mariam Mengitsue. Famine which killed tens of millions in the Soviet Union in 1921-22 and 1932-3, China in 1958-61 and Bengal in 1943 were all the direct result of government policies which severely distorted production and/or distribution of food.
These large famines deserve a closer look.
With the famines in the USSR, not only did Soviet policies provide a disincentive to farmers to lower food output, but in both cases the USSR decided to export millions of tons of grain during periods when its citizens starved in large numbers. Lenin finally called in Western aid agencies (led by future U.S. president Herbert Hoover) to stop the 1921-22 famine, while Stalin explicitly rejected appealing to outside aid during the 1932-3 famine leading to the deaths of an estimated 7 million (another 7.5 million are estimated to have died in the collectivization and dekulakization programs undertaken by Stalin which directly caused the lowered grain output).
China experienced what is believed by many to be the worst case of famine in world history -- a mind boggling 30 million people are believed to have perished. The cause was not drought or pestilence or some other natural disaster, but Mao Tse-Tung’s Great Leap Forward which destroyed Chinese agriculture.
Deciding it wasn’t going to let the Communists lead the world in causing famine, Great Britain inflicted a terrible famine on Bengal in 1943. Fearing a Japanese invasion of that colony, Great Britain systematically reduced all local grain supplies so the Japanese wouldn’t be able to seize it after the anticipated invasion.
Famine in the 20th century has been inflicted on tens of millions of people by the very governments they looked to for help during agricultural crises. Unlike crop yields, this problem does not have a simple solution.
The world currently produces more than enough food to provide every single man, woman and child alive today with an adequate diet. As the table below, taken from William Bender and Margaret Smith's Population, Food, and Nutrition makes clear, total per capita calories produced annually far exceeds nutrition requirements:
Annual World Food Production, 1991
(Bender and Smith 1997) | |
| Total food calories produced/person |
7,460
|
| Per capita calories per day/person |
3,810
|
| Surplus food calories |
3,650
|
Basically what the table shows is that there is enough food produced annually to provide 7,460 calories per day to every person on the planet. Since 3,810 calories per day is more than what even extraordinarily active people require, there is more than enough food produced annually to feed the world's current population (almost twice as much!). This does not mean, however, that people do not go hungry -- just that hunger does not occur because there is insufficient food produced globally.
Currently, enough food is supplied globally [to meet total demand for food], but yet it is estimated that in 1990/92 some 839 million people in the so-called developing countries had inadequate access to food...
Some doomsayers concede there's currently enough food produced to feed everyone alive, but claim the amount of food available is beginning to decline. This does not appear to be the case. Consider this analysis of Food and Agricultural Organization figures by Dennis Avery:
World Calories Per Capita Per Day (Bailey 1995)
| |||
1963
|
1992
|
Percentage increase
| |
| World |
2,287
|
2,697
|
+18
|
| United States |
3,067
|
3,642
|
+19
|
| Third World |
1,940
|
2,473
|
+27
|
| Asia |
1,888
|
2,494
|
+32
|
| Latin America |
2,363
|
2,690
|
+13
|
| Africa |
2,155
|
2,348
|
+9
|
The amazing thing about this chart is the huge absolute gain in food production this represents. Consider that in the 1960s some people predicted total crops yields would begin to decline. Not only did yields increase, but they expanded so fast that even though the world added many more millions of mouths to feed, each mouth had more to eat at the beginning of the 1990s. As Donald O. Mitchell, Merlinda D. Ingco and Ronald C. Duncan note in their book, The World Food Outlook, "yield increases accounted for 90 percent of the growth of world cereals production from 1950 to 1990 when the annual rate of growth was 2.24 per cent" (Mitchell, et al 1997, p.57). The following table illustrates the long term trend of increasing yields,
World wheat, rice and maize yield growth rates, 1951 to 1990 (per cent annum) (Mitchell, et al 1997, p.58)
| ||||
1951-60
|
1961-70
|
1970-80
|
1980-90
| |
Wheat |
1.84
|
3.06
|
1.99
|
2.89
|
Rice |
1.27
|
2.40
|
1.63
|
2.34
|
Maize |
2.74
|
2.48
|
2.84
|
1.01
|
Note: the downturn in maize production 1980-90 was the result of a severe 1988 drought in the United States.
The upshot of this, as Mitchell, et al document, is that over the long term world cereals production has consistently grown faster than population. The following chart illustrating the growth of world cereals production and population based on data from the United Nations and the United States Department of Agriculture.
World cereals consumption and population growth, 1960 to 1990 (per cent increases, Mitchell, et al 1997, p.35)
| |||
| 1960-70 | 1970-80 | 1980-90 | |
| Industrial economies | |||
| Total cereals consumption |
30.8
|
17.1
|
9.5
|
| Population |
11.0
|
8.4
|
6.1
|
| Developing economies | |||
| Total cereals consumption |
42.9
|
46.6
|
26.8
|
| Population |
27.7
|
25.0
|
23.3
|
For the last three decades, growth in food production consistently outpaced growth in population.
As the Food and Agricultural Organization put it in a recent report on world food security, this increase in available food saved millions of lives and reduced the amount of hunger in the world:
As the Food and Agricultural Organization put it in a recent report on world food security, this increase in available food saved millions of lives and reduced the amount of hunger in the world:
- This … reflects a substantial degree of progress since the beginning of the 1970s: the number [of people facing hunger] has declined absolutely from about 907 million and in relative terms from 35% of the population of the developing countries to 21%, mainly as a result of progress in east Asia (including China) and parts of South Asia, such as India and Pakistan.
Or to put it other terms, in 1960 fifty-nine percent of the global population consumed less than 200 kg of grain annually. In 1994, the percentage consuming less than 200 kg annually fell to 38 percent, an amazing feat given the enormous increase in population in the intervening years (Bender and Smith 1997, p.19).
Are there upper limits to how many people can be adequately fed? Gerhard Heilig of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Luxembourg, Austria, addressed this question in his excellent survey of past predictions and current knowledge about food production, "How Many People Can Be Fed on Earth" (Heilig 1995, pp.207-261).
Heilig concisely points out the various steps needed to arrive at a bottom line number. At the outermost layer is an upper hypothetical limit called the net primary production level. This is based solely on the maximum level of photosynthesis available from solar radiation. Knowing how much sunlight strikes the Earth’s surface and how efficiently plants convert this solar energy, hypothetical upper limits of food availability on Earth can be calculated. Of course even here, estimates vary wildly from enough food to support 30 or 40 billion to claims that theoretically enough food could be provided to feed 1 trillion people.
But at any given period of time, it is technically feasible to extract only a portion of that hypothetical production into actual production. Assuming the universal use of the highest technical methods, enough food could be grown at current technological levels to feed perhaps 20 to 35 billion people.
But just as not all incoming solar energy can be converted to food, so neither is all technologically feasible food actually grown. Only economically feasible food production is generally engaged in. The costs of capital investments and opportunity costs limit farmers. In some areas, for example, soil is so poor that it would be better to devote land to some other use, perhaps for office buildings or untouched green space, than to try to cultivate it. Alternatively, capital investment might make no sense until local infrastructures to make use of it are built. It makes little sense to increase grain production, for example, if roads are so poor the grain cannot be cheaply transported.
Finally, not all economically feasible food production is ecologically feasible. It is certainly technically and perhaps economically feasible, for example, to clear the world’s tropical rain forests and plant agricultural crops there. On balance, however, the potential value of maintaining the tropical rain forests is probably higher than the same area would be for crop planting. In addition, high yield farming creates problems such as nitrogen-heavy runoffs, which are not necessarily suited for every area.
Taking all of these factors into account, Heilig concludes that at current technological levels the Earth could sustainably support 10 to 15 billion people -- a little more than what the United Nations projects world population will likely stabilize at sometime during the next century.
But Heilig notes there is one more limit to food production -- political and social factors. Much of Africa, for example, could be producing enough food right now with low agricultural inputs to feed itself if the political will were there. Instead many African governments have engaged in policies which actually discourage farmers from producing food. Heilig writes that feeding 10-15 billion people is possible only,
Heilig concisely points out the various steps needed to arrive at a bottom line number. At the outermost layer is an upper hypothetical limit called the net primary production level. This is based solely on the maximum level of photosynthesis available from solar radiation. Knowing how much sunlight strikes the Earth’s surface and how efficiently plants convert this solar energy, hypothetical upper limits of food availability on Earth can be calculated. Of course even here, estimates vary wildly from enough food to support 30 or 40 billion to claims that theoretically enough food could be provided to feed 1 trillion people.
But at any given period of time, it is technically feasible to extract only a portion of that hypothetical production into actual production. Assuming the universal use of the highest technical methods, enough food could be grown at current technological levels to feed perhaps 20 to 35 billion people.
But just as not all incoming solar energy can be converted to food, so neither is all technologically feasible food actually grown. Only economically feasible food production is generally engaged in. The costs of capital investments and opportunity costs limit farmers. In some areas, for example, soil is so poor that it would be better to devote land to some other use, perhaps for office buildings or untouched green space, than to try to cultivate it. Alternatively, capital investment might make no sense until local infrastructures to make use of it are built. It makes little sense to increase grain production, for example, if roads are so poor the grain cannot be cheaply transported.
Finally, not all economically feasible food production is ecologically feasible. It is certainly technically and perhaps economically feasible, for example, to clear the world’s tropical rain forests and plant agricultural crops there. On balance, however, the potential value of maintaining the tropical rain forests is probably higher than the same area would be for crop planting. In addition, high yield farming creates problems such as nitrogen-heavy runoffs, which are not necessarily suited for every area.
Taking all of these factors into account, Heilig concludes that at current technological levels the Earth could sustainably support 10 to 15 billion people -- a little more than what the United Nations projects world population will likely stabilize at sometime during the next century.
But Heilig notes there is one more limit to food production -- political and social factors. Much of Africa, for example, could be producing enough food right now with low agricultural inputs to feed itself if the political will were there. Instead many African governments have engaged in policies which actually discourage farmers from producing food. Heilig writes that feeding 10-15 billion people is possible only,
... If we can prevent (civil) wars with soldiers plundering harvests or devastating crop fields with land mines; if we can stop the stupidity of collectivization and central planning in agriculture; if we can agree on free (international) trade for agricultural products; if we redistribute agricultural land to those that actually use it for production; if we provide credits, training and high-yield agriculture to the agro-climactic and sociocultural conditions of arid regions and use it carefully to avoid environmental destruction; if we implement optimal water management and conservation practices. If we do all this during the next few decades, we could certainly be able to feed a doubled or tripled world population (Heilig 1994, pp.253-4).
Other experts in food production have reached similar conclusions. William Bender and Margaret Smith note that by merely shifting to an all vegetarian diet, over 10 billion people could be fed without any increase in farm land or technology (Bender and Smith 1997, p.5)
The Food and Agricultural Organization published a survey of food production capacities in developing regions whose results are shown on the table below.
The Food and Agricultural Organization published a survey of food production capacities in developing regions whose results are shown on the table below.
Present and projected populations and ratios to present and projected population supporting capacities by location (Food and Agricultural Organization 1984, p. 82-7).
| |||||
| Location | Land area (million ha) | Year 2000 population (mill.) | Low inputs ratio | Intermediate inputs ratio | High inputs ratio |
| Africa |
2,878.10
|
780.10
|
1.610
|
5.75
|
16.5
|
| Central America |
271.60
|
215.20
|
1.35
|
2.57
|
6.01
|
| South America |
1,770.20
|
392.6
|
3.151
|
13.34
|
31.51
|
| Southeast Asia |
897.60
|
1,937.10
|
1.14
|
2.25
|
3.27
|
| Southwest Asia |
677.40
|
264.70
|
0.68
|
0.90
|
1.23
|
| Five-region totals |
6,494.90
|
3,589.70
|
1.56
|
4.16
|
9.25
|
Low inputs was defined as "using no fertilizers, pesticides or improved seeds and no long-term conservation measures"; intermediate inputs as "some fertilizers, pesticides and improved seeds, conservation measures and improved cropping patterns on half the land"; and high inputs as "full use of all inputs, full conservation measures and the most productive mix of crops on all land" (FAO 1984, p.x) The ratios are to the projected 2000 population, so Africa's projected 2000 population is 780 million and with intermediate inputs it could produce enough food to feed 4.5 billion people.
Although there is plenty of food grown today and the food situation has been improving for the last 40 years, will it continue to improve in the future?
In their book The World Food Outlook, Donald Mitchell, Merlinda Ingco and Ronald Duncan summarize their survey of existing studies of future agricultural production by asserting,
In their book The World Food Outlook, Donald Mitchell, Merlinda Ingco and Ronald Duncan summarize their survey of existing studies of future agricultural production by asserting,
Overall, these studies of the world food outlook are in broad agreement. They conclude that global food production will continue to increase faster than consumption, that developing economies will significantly increase imports and that consumption levels in developing economies will continue to increase (Mitchell, et al 1997, p.144).
The two exceptions to this otherwise rosy evaluation are sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union which are weighed down by massive economic and political problems that led to lowered both domestic production and consumption of food (Mitchell, et al 1997, p.146-7).
By comparing potential agricultural production with actual agricultural production, the reader can see that agricultural production should have no problem meeting the growing population. Consider this table comparing the two by region,
Estimated maximum grain production by region (Bender and Smith, 1997, p. 26)
| |||
| Region | Estimated maximum production (million metric tons) | Actual production (million metric tons) | Actual as percent of estimated maximum |
| South America |
11,106
|
69
|
0.6
|
| Australia |
2,358
|
24
|
1.0
|
| Africa |
10,845
|
88
|
0.8
|
| Asia |
14,281
|
860
|
6.0
|
| North & Central America |
7,072
|
402
|
5.7
|
| Europe |
4,168
|
283
|
6.8
|
| Total |
49,830
|
1,955
|
3.9
|
Increasing available grain to meet demand can be accomplished by putting into production relatively small amounts of the potential grain production of the world. Utilizing some of the more fertile land in Africa, such as in Sudan for example, would likely be sufficient in itself to meet the food needs of that continent.
As an FAO report summarized the likely future trend,
Projections by FAO for food supplies by region suggest that future food problems will be concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. Availabilities in all other regions are expected to keep pace with growing food requirements (FAO 1996).
If Africans and others in the developing world continue to suffer from hunger through the middle of the 21st century, it will not be due to a dearth of grain but due to the political and economic factors that plagued the developing world in the 20th century.
A common claim made by those convinced the world is overpopulated is that the current world population is taxing available fisheries to the limit. Some groups such as Population Action even make the claim that total world fish catches have begun a downward spiral as the system begins to crash. A close look at what is really happening with the world’s fish, however, warrants optimism.
As the Food and Agricultural Organization put it in The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 1996,
As the Food and Agricultural Organization put it in The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 1996,
In recent years fish supplies have expanded rapidly ... in 1994 they reached 109.6 million tons ... and preliminary figures for 1995 indicate a new peak of total production at 112.3 million tons ... average annual per capita availability of food fish increased to 14 kg" (Food and Agricultural Organization 1996).
So why do some groups claim that world fish catches are declining? And even if they aren’t declining can the fish catch keep growing faster than population?
Groups like Population Action claim that fish catches are declining because they only look at one type of fish catch -- those from traditional fisheries such as ocean fishing. From 1994 fish caught in this way varied between 80 and 85 million and from 1994 to 1995 declined by 0.02 million tons (Food and Agricultural Organization 1996).
What environmentalists groups leave out is the huge rise in aquaculture, which are essentially fish farms. Fish procured from aquaculture grew from 18.6 million tons in 1994 to 21.3 million tons in 1995, and could grow to as much as 39 million tons by 2010 (Food and Agriculture Organization 1996).
Will this be enough to meet demand for fish? Currently it is estimated that demand for fish in 2010 will be from 140 to 150 million tons. It is possible to meet that level, but only if governments stop squandering the natural fisheries which they control (Food and Agricultural Organization 1996). The mismanagement of the world’s oceans is a classic example of the problem of failing to create property rights in natural resources -- no one has an incentive to preserve and expand the resource over time.
The world’s fisheries, then, are in largely the same position that traditional agriculture is in. Where governments have allowed markets backed with strong property rights prevail, food and fish are abundant. Where instead political solutions determine everything, food and fish are scarce.
The world’s fisheries, then, are in largely the same position that traditional agriculture is in. Where governments have allowed markets backed with strong property rights prevail, food and fish are abundant. Where instead political solutions determine everything, food and fish are scarce.
The answer to this is as varied as the number of developing countries, of which detailed analysis is being added regularly. There are some general patterns that emerge, however.
Hunger is often the result of direct political decisions.Famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s, for example, was not a natural disaster, but in fact was the direct result of decisions made by the government to starve out areas controlled by rebels. More recently the government of Sudan briefly ordered United Nations relief flights to stop airlifting food supplies to famine-prone southern Sudan controlled by rebels trying to overthrow the government. Famine in our century has become almost exclusively a political rather than an agricultural phenomenon.
Government policies often artificially reduce the amount of available food.
Upon independence, many of the former colonial nations decided they would do something the colonial powers never did -- grant their people access to cheap food. To achieve that, many nations placed price ceilings above which farmers could not sell their grain. The results were predicable; farmers decreased the amount of crops sown. In some areas the amount of cropland in use actually fell. Developing world governments also made it difficult for their farmers to compete through prohibitive tariffs designed to protect local industry. While placing steep taxes on fertilizer imports to protect domestic fertilizer producers sounds like a grand idea, it hampers local farmers from providing food as cheaply and abundantly as possible.
Wars, government corruption and political instability hurt food production in the developing world.
Finally, good agricultural production requires political stability. If a civil war had been raging across the United States over the last 40 years you can almost guarantee it would have trouble feeding its people; it is thus unsurprising that a nation such as Sudan has trouble producing enough food. Similarly governments where official corruption is tolerated or even encouraged often results in distorted markets and infrastructure. Roads get built to the wrong places or not at all based on cronyism. Land gets seized from poor farmers and is given to rich landowners with little interest in farming the land. The poor get taxed but the government doesn't even pretend to offer services or even adequate police protection in return. If the reader sits down and closely examines the history and situation of any country facing severe food insecurity, he or she will find that is the result of internal political disorder unrelated to potential agricultural production.
Additionally hunger has consistently declined in the 20th century. According to the United Nations, the number of malnourished people increased from 540 million in 1979/81 to 580 million in 1989/1990.
Since world population grew by 23 percent during the same period, the percentage of people hungry actually declined during this period.
What this means is more than 90 percent of all people alive today receive enough food. Of those who don’t, according to the UN and World Bank, 90 percent of them are within 10 percent of their needed calorie total.
The problem of hunger today is not lack of food, but interference with distribution of food. In Africa, for example, which has experienced the worst famines in the last quarter of the 20th century, people starved not because there wasn’t enough food, but because of the actions taken by governments there to keep food out of the hands of people.
One of the best accomplishments of the 20th century is the near-eradication of famine.
- Famine caused 20 to 25 million deaths in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. For today’s larger population, a comparable number of famine deaths for the current 1975-2000 quarter of the century would be about 50 million people, yet the famine death toll for 1975-2000 is likely to be 2 million or fewer (Bailey 1995, p. 55).
http://www.tennesseerighttolife.org/human_life_issues/human_life_issues_food_shortage_facts.htm
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