As the world’s population continues to grow, the demands from humans on the Earth’s resources continue to magnify. Humans are impacting the environment more than ever before. Can food production keep pace with this rapidly growing world population? There is a basic philosophical division in the study of population and food supply that can be characterized as a debate between optimists and pessimists. Some answer this question with optimism, yet others answer with strong pessimism. This paper will explore the different theories and facts that both optimists and pessimists put forth when deliberating whether or not we will end up as winners or losers in the race between population growth and the food supply.
The pessimists do not believe that food production will keep pace with the rising population numbers. Many of them point to environmental stress and the increasing difficulties encountered in expanding agricultural land, water supply, and crop yields for evidence. They anticipate that a large expansion of agricultural output is not feasible and even doubt whether current levels of crop production can be sustained in many countries.
Thomas Malthus was the first economist to offer this gloomy prediction. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus concluded that the amount of agricultural land is the most pressing constraint on population growth. His ‘population trap’ theory is a simple proposition yet it summarizes much of the pessimistic viewpoint. As population grows geometrically and the food supply increases only arithmetically, available food per person declines. Eventually population growth will outstrip the food supply, leading to the increasing suffering of the population, famine, disease, and war. As a result, some form of "natural check" will halt or reverse population growth.
The world has avoided Malthus’ population trap to date. Technological developments in the fields of agriculture, health care, and birth control have been factors that have led the world away from this Malthusian fate. Land is not necessarily an irreplaceable source of natural capital and Malthus’ first assumption, that agricultural output grows only arithmetically, need not always hold true. For example, from 1950 through the 1980s, world agriculture underwent a "Green Revolution." During this time period, new hybrid forms of wheat, rice, and corn seeds were invented which produced much higher yields per acre than did the conventional seeds. The results of this ‘revolution’ demonstrate that Malthus’ theory is not entirely rational. From 1950 to 1984, world grain output increased by a factor of 2.6. Over this same period, world population approximately doubled. Both agriculture output and population increased geometrically-- food supply actually surpassed population growth by a margin.
Malthus’ second assumption, that population growth grows geometrically, also does not always hold true. Not including immigration, wealthy countries often have very low population growth rates, sometimes below zero. Natural decrease, fewer births than deaths, is already a reality in Germany, Sweden, Russia, and most former Soviet republics. The availability of birth control has meant that families are able to limit the number of children they have if they so desire.
Although Malthus’ predictions have not become reality, pessimists point to the most recent facts for justification of their viewpoint. In recent years, classic Malthusian conditions have begun to prevail at a global level. Between 1984 and 1995, grain output per acre improved very little and population growth began to surpass growth in food production. World grain output per person fell eleven percent. The reason for this reversal in trends is due to the fact that the Green Revolution had exhausted its potential. For instance, by 1985, India had already converted eighty percent of its wheatlands to the high-yielding seed varieties. The harmful consequences of the Green Revolution have begun to take shape. The Green Revolution’s inventive technology has induced a shift to capital-intensive, chemical-intensive, irrigation-intensive, large-scale agriculture. Direct environmental consequences such as soil erosion, waterlogging, and salting of irrigated land has lead to annual crop losses of about ten million tons per year. This is half of what the annual grain in production was during the 1980s. The Green Revolution has also spurred some unfavorable social consequences. For example, the productivity gains of the Green Revolution were not evenly shared. In many instances, the shift to large-scale agriculture displaced and impoverished small farmers, which has in turn led to greater poverty and hunger.
Optimists, on the other hand, believe that the world is capably equipped to win the race between population growth and the food supply. Their argument is based on the relatively low crop yields, inefficiencies throughout the food production and consumption chain, and the ample reserves of potential arable land in many developing countries. "Sounder government policies, wider application of green revolution technology, reduced inefficiencies, upgraded rural infrastructure, and greater investments in human resources and research will make much larger harvests possible."
Dennis Avery in "The World’s Rising Food Productivity" optimistically suggests that the world’s productivity system will pull us through the race between food supply and population growth as winners. According to Avery, the world’s food strategy is one of the world’s great successes. The secret of this success is rising productivity, which is generated by agricultural science and capital investment. Avery points to supporting facts to illustrate his point. The world food output in the past thirty years has more than doubled. The increased food production has permitted a sharp increase of twenty-five percent in per capita food supplies for much of the developing world. Wheat and rice production have been rising annually at two percent and three and a half percent respectively. Higher-yielding seeds, modern fertilizers, and improved pest control have made it cheaper to increase food production. The world’s stock of capital is larger and is growing faster. Increasing investments in agricultural research, in higher prices to farmers, and in expanded infrastructure, raise food output substantially and sustainably. The world still has more than a billion acres of unplanted or underused arable land. Avery declares that the world could readily feed another billion people, right now, without stressing any fragile acres or using heavy doses of farm chemicals.
Avery specifies new farming systems that have helped increase the world’s productivity. For instance, Asia has learned how to grow another hundred million tons of dry-season wheat between its rice crops. A redesigned ox-drawn plow has made possible two good crops instead of one poor crop on large tracts of "cracking-clay" soil in India and potentially Ethiopia. African rice research indicates that high-yielding rice could be grown on five hundred million acres of inland wetlands due to the improvement of seeds and human disease control-- only about twelve million acres of this land are currently farmed. Chemical fertilizers have amplified the impact of the new seeds and farming systems-- global applications of chemical fertilizer have increased by five-fold.
Avery also notes how major contributions of capital can better food production. In terms of irrigation, agriculture already accounts for seventy-percent of the world’s water use, yet it has an efficiency rate of only forty-percent. Sprinkler systems can triple water use efficiency over simple flood systems. Another suggestion Avery offers for increasing the world’s food supply is to improve farm-to-market transport. In Bangladesh, a study has found that new roads, on average, raised crop production by one-third. Roads cut the cost of improved seeds and fertilizer and the cost of moving farm products to urban consumers. Furthermore, establishing storage facilities and processing plants in Third World countries would cut the losses of farm production that is lost due to birds, rodents, insects, and spoilage.
Gale Johnson, too, stresses optimism when considering the world’s future food supply. In his article, "On the Resurgent Population and Food Debate," Johnson puts forth that he does not see a compelling reason explaining why we must seriously debate this race in the first place. He believes that pessimists seem to have a selective memory when they make claims that the world will not be capable of winning the race between population growth and food supply. There exists empirical data as well as theories that counter the pessimists’ arguments. For example, Johnson points to the recent claims that have been made that the world is overpopulated and that the growth of world demand for food will soon outpace the growth of supply. Johnson notes that the fact that similar claims, made over the past three decades, have all proved to be false seems always to be forgotten. Another example Johnson mentions is the fact that not many people remember that Malthus made revisions to his first theory of a population trap. Malthus came to agree with those who, before the first edition of his essay, believed that there would be continuing improvement in the well-being of people. In his second edition of his essay, Malthus introduced another check to population growth- due to a combination of laws and institutions of love or self-interest. Also, Johnson asserts that we are often reminded that world per capita food production peaked in 1984 and has failed to regain that level. It is not true, however, that world per capita food production failed to increase during the 1980s: the world experienced approximately four and a half- percent growth in food output per capita. Johnson predicts that the supply of food over the next couple decades will increase as least as fast as the demand for food, probably faster. He concludes this by referring to reputable studies that have been done that show how the rate of growth of demand for food in the three decades from 1990s to 2020 will be significantly less than the growth from 1960 to 1990 due to a slowdown in the rate of population growth.
Recent forecasts made by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization with respect to future food supply and demand have been guardedly optimistic. The July 2000 report projects that food supplies are set to grow faster than population. The world population of approximately eight billion people by the year 2030 will be better fed and more people will have adequate access to food. The Food and Agriculture Organization forecasts that population growth will continue to slow and food consumption levels will be higher in an increasing number of countries. This will cause world agriculture to grow at a slower pace but growth in agriculture will continue to outpace world population growth of 1.2 percent up to 2015 and .8 percent in the period to 2030. By 2030, crop production in the developing countries is projected to be seventy-percent higher than in 1997. The Food and Agriculture Organization anticipates current cropland to become more productive as farmers adopt methods that reduce the time land lies fallow and increase the number of crops harvested per year- the rest will come from a further expansion of arable land. Arable land in the developing countries is projected to increase by twelve-percent until 2030, most of it in South America and sub-Saharan Africa.
Although the Food and Agriculture Organization predicts that the food supply will outpace population growth, this result will not come without toil. We must continue to increase capital and investment and formulate new policies that will help us win this race. Crafting more effective agricultural policies will offer great potential for boosting food production in less developed countries over the next few decades. Robert Livernash and Eric Rodenberg, in the Population Bulletin of March 1998, suggest that giving farmers better access to credit, improving extension and training programs, improving rural infrastructure, and encouraging more competitive private markets are among the many reforms that could strengthen incentives for food production. Other reforms, such as reducing input subsidies and establishing market prices for water, could improve the efficiency of resource use and reduce environmental damage. Growth today must not come at the expense of future generations. A bright future can be visualized, but it will not come without vigorous and careful work upon our part.