In 1798 32
year-old British economist Malthus anonymously published “An Essay on
the Principle of Population” and in it he argued that human
population’s increase geometrically (1, 2, 4, 16 etc.) while their food
supply can only increase arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4 etc.).
"The
power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to
produce subsistence for man". Thomas Robert Malthus
It is
estimated that the population of the world reached:
The second
half of the 20th century saw the biggest increase in the world’s
population in human history. Our population surged because:
- Medical advances lessened the
mortality rate in many countries
- Massive increases in
agricultural productivity because of the “Green Revolution”
The global
death rate has dropped almost continuously since the start of the industrial
revolution - personal hygiene, improved methods of sanitation and the
development of antibiotics have all played a major role.
The
world's population was said to have reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011 and
is estimated to hit the eight billion mark by 2030.
By 2050,
the world's population is expected to reach around nine billion - minimum and
maximum projections range from 7.4 billion to 10.6 billion.
By
the mid 2060s it’s possible that 11.4 billion
people will inhabit this planet.
Malthusian
pessimism has long been criticized by doubters believing technological
advancements in:
would keep crop production ahead of the population growth
curve.
Malthus’s
prediction hasn’t come true because, so far, rising agricultural yields
have always outpaced population growth.
Enter the
Black Swans
The Black
Swan Theory or "Theory of Black Swan Events" was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to
explain: 1) the disproportionate role of high-impact, hard to predict, and
rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history,
science, finance and technology, 2) the non-computability of the probability
of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to their
very nature of small probabilities) and 3) the psychological biases that make
people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the
massive role of the rare event in historical affairs. Black Swan Theory
refers to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their
dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers,
collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences. Wikipedia
Threats to
access and distribution of food supplies could include:
- Political instability
of supplier countries
- The
manipulation of supplies
- The
competition over supplies
- Attacks on supply
infrastructure
- Accidents
and natural disasters
The term
Green Revolution refers to a series of research, development, and technology
transfers that happened between the 1940s and the late 1970s.
The initiatives involved:
- Development of high yielding
varieties of cereal grains
- Expansion
of irrigation infrastructure
- Modernization of
management techniques
- Distribution of hybridized
seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers
All these
new technologies increased global agriculture production with the full
effects starting to be felt in the 1960s. The Green Revolution's use of
hybrid seeds, irrigation, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fossil fuels,
farm machinery, and high-tech growing and processing systems combined to
greatly increase agriculture yields. The Green
Revolution is responsible for feeding billions - and likely enabling the
birth of billions more people.
Cereal
production more than doubled in developing nations - yields of rice, maize,
and wheat increased steadily. Between 1950 and 1984 world grain production
increased by over 250% - and the world added a couple more billion people to
the dinner table.
Unfortunately
the high yield growth is tapering off and in some cases declining. This is in
large part because of an increase in the price of fertilizers, other
chemicals and fossil fuels, but also because the overuse of chemicals has
exhausted the soil and irrigation has depleted water aquifers.
“World
agricultural markets have become so finely balanced between supply and demand
that local disruptions can have a major impact on the global prices of the
affected commodities and then reverberate throughout the entire food
chain.” HSBC
report
Over the
next fifty years, as we add another 4.5 billion people to the world’s
population, global demand for food will increase almost 70% if population
growth predictions are correct.
Already
approximately one billion people go to bed hungry each night.
Somewhere
in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds - most are children
under the age of five.
"The
power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce
subsistence for man, that premature death must in
some shape or other visit the human race." Malthus T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of
population.
There has
been almost no real increase in funding of the international agricultural
science effort since the 1970s. This global decline in agricultural R&D
means less new technology will be available to farmers. What is available are
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) - heavily bio-engineered seeds - which
rely on the same industrial credits – fertilizers, pesticides, diesel
and irrigation - that the first Green Revolution did.
Conclusion
“Social
unrest may reflect a variety of factors such as poverty, unemployment, and
social injustice. Despite the many possible contributing factors, the timing
of violent protests in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011 as well as
earlier riots in 2008 coincides with large peaks in global food
prices.” M. Lagi, K.Z. Bertrand and Y. Bar-Yam, "The Food Crises
and Political Instability in North Africa and the Middle East" New
England Complex Systems Institute
New England Complex Systems Institute
Population
growth and increasing demand for food supplies go hand in hand. Unfortunately
yield increases have generally leveled off and supply is barely keeping up
with demand. The fact is, that today, we’re one poor harvest, one Black
Swan event away from a food supply catastrophe and a repeat of the food
shortages that caused the Arab Spring. These facts should be on
everyone’s radar screen. Are they on yours?
If not,
maybe they should be.
Richard (Rick) Mills
rick@aheadoftheherd.com
www.aheadoftheherd.com
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