Starvation is a reality in the world we live in for billions of people around the world. With the Great Recession leading to severe economic difficulties and with welfare systems under attack due to stubborn, elitist mindsets, food security has become a matter of concern even in more advanced countries, albeit to a much smaller extent than in poorer countries. At the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, the future of world food security presents an even scarier picture. And present and future overpopulation have become bigger matters of concern than ever before.
Concerns about overpopulation have been raised by analysts in the past, for example, by Paul Ehrlich. However, euphoric thinking and complacency about energy and resources led to these warnings being ignored. New oil reserves were being discovered around the world. Nuclear power was being advertised, and is still being advertised, as a long-term energy solution despite the safety problems that several experts ascribe to it. Universities and national laboratories were advertising the potential advantages accruing from a possible breakthrough in controlled nuclear fusion, a kind of holy grail of energy wherein the mechanism that powers the sun is harnessed in a controlled manner to provide unprecedented amounts of energy. Unlike the last two decades, global warming was not a pressing item on the radar screen of environmental analysts prior to that because the scientific establishment was just beginning to grapple with the problem. Large parts of Asia and Africa starved. However, it seems the thinking was that it was merely due to underdevelopment in several regions, and that as more land was brought under cultivation and as food distribution systems improved, this problem would be solved. Overpopulation is a term that can only be understood in the context of the standards of living sought and the resources available for the same. It also needs to be understood in the context of stages of development. Since the advertisement on the resources front was optimistic, the bugbear of overpopulation was drowned out by the noise surrounding growth and development.
But the population picture, the resources picture and the environment picture have all changed in significant manners in the last couple of decades. Scientific euphoria has bitten the dust before a slew of economic and environmental problems. While dogged determination still marks the thinking in several quarters, the analysts as well as the public are beginning to realize the severe limitations of conventional approaches to the exploitation, management and development of resources. The real picture is decidedly pessimistic and worrisome. New and smarter ways of scientific and technological thinking are necessary if the world is to be able to cope with rising populations, environmental problems and resource scarcity. The very concept of standard of living will probably need significant redefinition, and people may well have to find meaning and add meaning to life in ways other than those heavily dependent on material abundance and breakneck progress in big technology. All may not be lost. People may well start thinking along new, fruitful lines about how to order their lives in an age of resource scarcity. And that may turn out to be a good thing.
On the food front, the world is faced with a serious food security problem in the fifty to hundred year timeframe. An examination of land use around the world shows that there is very little cultivable land that has been left unexploited. While the agricultural output can be increased in the already cultivated areas, the picture is not that comforting when climate change is taken into account. Desert areas, inaccessible mountainous areas, forest areas or ice-covered and snow-covered land make up the remainder of the land. Futuristic ideas about doing agriculture in desert areas cannot be the basis of serious planning for the future at this moment. For example, scientists are yet to develop cheap food crops that can grow in areas with minimal water supply like deserts. As for forest areas, they are precious resources because they act as carbon dioxide sinks and provide other resources like timber. In several areas, they also help prevent excessive flooding. In other places, they help prevent desertification. Mountainous terrains have their own problem when it comes to agriculture, and are subject to problems of erosion, especially if trees are cut to make way for agriculture. Ice-covered or snow-covered terrains like Siberia are not very amenable to agriculture either. Conversion of pasture land to agricultural land will have its own economic constraints and it is a topic that cannot be dealt with in detail in this article. Further, the cutthroat competition of modern capitalism can easily lead to irresponsible real estate construction and appropriation of precious land for industrial uses. Lack of planning in economies that have deregulated land use policies can lead to irreversible land use misallocation. A lot of the agriculture in today’s world is dependent on inorganic fertilizers that help replenish essential nutrients in the soil. However, there are serious sustainability questions about agriculture based on inorganic fertilizers. While nitrate fertilizers can be made from chemical sources that are either relatively abundant or renewable, phosphate fertilizers depend on supplies of phosphate rock or phosphorite for their production. The United States, Russia, China and Morocco have most of the phosphate rock deposits in the world. A heavily populated country like India has very limited phosphate rock deposits. In the countries that have large deposits of phosphate rock, phosphorite supplies can run out in a few decades based on current consumption rates. For example, the United States is likely to become a net importer of phosphate rock in a couple of decades. Internet resources suggest that phosphorite deposits on land may last about 100 years at current rates of extraction ( although there are significant uncertainties regarding matching of dates for extraction and deposit determination in the sources that this writer found ). Off-shore deposits may be adequate for another 200 years. However, the costs of extraction are likely to be significantly higher, if not prohibitively expensive. Also, there may be significant errors in the estimates for the off-shore deposit amounts. Further, it is not clear how economical extraction is or will be in the region of North Africa in and around Morocco, which supposedly have the largest deposits. Also, as the population of the world increases from near 7 billion to 9 or 10 billion, the extraction rate will most likely increase, leading to faster depletion of phosphorite. This means the phosphorite reserves on land may last much less than 100 years. Given the complacent attitude so far about other scarce resources, it will not be surprising if this timeframe may well get reduced to something like 50 years due to scientific errors in projection and due to escalation in production. Further, for countries that do not own phosphorite, the cost of procuring phosphorite on the international markets can increase significantly. Phosphorite economics, or for that matter the economics of other similar mineral resources, may become as important as the economics of petroleum.
The use of phosphate and nitrate fertilizers becomes necessary because nitrogen and phosphorus are crucial requirements for the biological processes involved in the production of food grains, fruits, vegetables etc. Organic fertilizers can be more expensive to manufacture, and it is not known to what extent they are good substitutes for inorganic fertilizers like phosphates. It is not clear to what extent or whether manure derived from animal dung or compost is a good substitute for inorganic fertilizers in different areas of agriculture.
If phosphorite production and increasing population cause severe strains on the world food supply, new areas for food production may need to be explored. Countries with large areas of unused land will be at an advantage in this regard, although due importance needs to be given to preserving crucial forest resources. Several poor countries may be at even greater disadvantage than now when it comes to providing food for their populations. The inadequacy of current systems like the World Food Programme in the area of hunger mitigation means that new and more powerful global systems may be needed. Since national governments may resist internationalist interventions in land allocation and food production policies, serious humanitarian problems can arise. The idea is to allocate land for food production beyond the capitalistic allocation in order to provide the disentitled or non-entitled populations with enough food till growth and development gives everybody the cash resources to afford enough food and nutrition on the global food market.
Will the United Nations address this issue with the seriousness it deserves or will it be caught in a morass of underfunding and apathy like it has so often been in the past about so many of the positive agendas ? Will international economic agencies like the International Monetary Fund keep basic agricultural and industrial requirements of beleaguered nations while doling out their monetary and fiscal prescriptions or will they remain insouciant to these fundamental concerns ? The answers to these questions may well determine if modern civilization is going to conform to minimum standards of humaneness in the area of food. There can be no bigger failure for the United Nations than to remain apathetic to looming problems in the area of national food self-sufficiency and in the area of food transfer to countries that have difficulty achieving food self-sufficiency in the short run.
The current economic paradigm is one of economic management at the national level and trade at the international level governed by certain rules. As for economic management at the national level, most of the ideological debate has focused on the question of growth and distribution. And as for trade at the international level, the debate has been about whether trade should be conducted under multilateral rules or bilateral rules. However, little or no attention has been paid to the question of scarcity problems and distribution problems that transcend international borders for basic and crucial items like food and basic medicine. Countries caught in a certain stage of development may well find it difficult to provide basic food security and health security to its masses for years to come. If food scarcity becomes a more ubiquitous phenomenon worldwide due to the land use and fertilizer scarcity scenarios outlined above, the current approach involving underfunded and struggling programmes like the World Food Programme will become even more questionable. An international framework to ensure the right allocation of land and to ensure proper food distribution across international borders will probably become necessary. How this will intermesh with national politics is uncertain. When it comes to such basic items as food, how the United Nations deals with intransigence regarding sharing resources across borders may well become the litmus test of its relevance.
As for countries that fail to provide decent amounts of food and nutrition to their own hungry masses while advertising self-sufficiency in the areas of food production, the option of economic sanctions against them should be considered seriously as a human rights measure. Hundreds of millions of people are malnourished or live and die in starvation in countries with apathetic governments that fail to provide food to the people even though the resources exist. The long-term consequences of this apathy can be, and often are, more serious than those of wars or genocides or weapons proliferation. While the latter are serious issues that the United Nations needs to deal with, it needs to come up with mechanisms using which it can put pressure on national governments to meet achievable food distribution aims by creating the proper distribution channels and by eliminating corruption.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
Concerns about overpopulation have been raised by analysts in the past, for example, by Paul Ehrlich. However, euphoric thinking and complacency about energy and resources led to these warnings being ignored. New oil reserves were being discovered around the world. Nuclear power was being advertised, and is still being advertised, as a long-term energy solution despite the safety problems that several experts ascribe to it. Universities and national laboratories were advertising the potential advantages accruing from a possible breakthrough in controlled nuclear fusion, a kind of holy grail of energy wherein the mechanism that powers the sun is harnessed in a controlled manner to provide unprecedented amounts of energy. Unlike the last two decades, global warming was not a pressing item on the radar screen of environmental analysts prior to that because the scientific establishment was just beginning to grapple with the problem. Large parts of Asia and Africa starved. However, it seems the thinking was that it was merely due to underdevelopment in several regions, and that as more land was brought under cultivation and as food distribution systems improved, this problem would be solved. Overpopulation is a term that can only be understood in the context of the standards of living sought and the resources available for the same. It also needs to be understood in the context of stages of development. Since the advertisement on the resources front was optimistic, the bugbear of overpopulation was drowned out by the noise surrounding growth and development.
But the population picture, the resources picture and the environment picture have all changed in significant manners in the last couple of decades. Scientific euphoria has bitten the dust before a slew of economic and environmental problems. While dogged determination still marks the thinking in several quarters, the analysts as well as the public are beginning to realize the severe limitations of conventional approaches to the exploitation, management and development of resources. The real picture is decidedly pessimistic and worrisome. New and smarter ways of scientific and technological thinking are necessary if the world is to be able to cope with rising populations, environmental problems and resource scarcity. The very concept of standard of living will probably need significant redefinition, and people may well have to find meaning and add meaning to life in ways other than those heavily dependent on material abundance and breakneck progress in big technology. All may not be lost. People may well start thinking along new, fruitful lines about how to order their lives in an age of resource scarcity. And that may turn out to be a good thing.
On the food front, the world is faced with a serious food security problem in the fifty to hundred year timeframe. An examination of land use around the world shows that there is very little cultivable land that has been left unexploited. While the agricultural output can be increased in the already cultivated areas, the picture is not that comforting when climate change is taken into account. Desert areas, inaccessible mountainous areas, forest areas or ice-covered and snow-covered land make up the remainder of the land. Futuristic ideas about doing agriculture in desert areas cannot be the basis of serious planning for the future at this moment. For example, scientists are yet to develop cheap food crops that can grow in areas with minimal water supply like deserts. As for forest areas, they are precious resources because they act as carbon dioxide sinks and provide other resources like timber. In several areas, they also help prevent excessive flooding. In other places, they help prevent desertification. Mountainous terrains have their own problem when it comes to agriculture, and are subject to problems of erosion, especially if trees are cut to make way for agriculture. Ice-covered or snow-covered terrains like Siberia are not very amenable to agriculture either. Conversion of pasture land to agricultural land will have its own economic constraints and it is a topic that cannot be dealt with in detail in this article. Further, the cutthroat competition of modern capitalism can easily lead to irresponsible real estate construction and appropriation of precious land for industrial uses. Lack of planning in economies that have deregulated land use policies can lead to irreversible land use misallocation. A lot of the agriculture in today’s world is dependent on inorganic fertilizers that help replenish essential nutrients in the soil. However, there are serious sustainability questions about agriculture based on inorganic fertilizers. While nitrate fertilizers can be made from chemical sources that are either relatively abundant or renewable, phosphate fertilizers depend on supplies of phosphate rock or phosphorite for their production. The United States, Russia, China and Morocco have most of the phosphate rock deposits in the world. A heavily populated country like India has very limited phosphate rock deposits. In the countries that have large deposits of phosphate rock, phosphorite supplies can run out in a few decades based on current consumption rates. For example, the United States is likely to become a net importer of phosphate rock in a couple of decades. Internet resources suggest that phosphorite deposits on land may last about 100 years at current rates of extraction ( although there are significant uncertainties regarding matching of dates for extraction and deposit determination in the sources that this writer found ). Off-shore deposits may be adequate for another 200 years. However, the costs of extraction are likely to be significantly higher, if not prohibitively expensive. Also, there may be significant errors in the estimates for the off-shore deposit amounts. Further, it is not clear how economical extraction is or will be in the region of North Africa in and around Morocco, which supposedly have the largest deposits. Also, as the population of the world increases from near 7 billion to 9 or 10 billion, the extraction rate will most likely increase, leading to faster depletion of phosphorite. This means the phosphorite reserves on land may last much less than 100 years. Given the complacent attitude so far about other scarce resources, it will not be surprising if this timeframe may well get reduced to something like 50 years due to scientific errors in projection and due to escalation in production. Further, for countries that do not own phosphorite, the cost of procuring phosphorite on the international markets can increase significantly. Phosphorite economics, or for that matter the economics of other similar mineral resources, may become as important as the economics of petroleum.
The use of phosphate and nitrate fertilizers becomes necessary because nitrogen and phosphorus are crucial requirements for the biological processes involved in the production of food grains, fruits, vegetables etc. Organic fertilizers can be more expensive to manufacture, and it is not known to what extent they are good substitutes for inorganic fertilizers like phosphates. It is not clear to what extent or whether manure derived from animal dung or compost is a good substitute for inorganic fertilizers in different areas of agriculture.
If phosphorite production and increasing population cause severe strains on the world food supply, new areas for food production may need to be explored. Countries with large areas of unused land will be at an advantage in this regard, although due importance needs to be given to preserving crucial forest resources. Several poor countries may be at even greater disadvantage than now when it comes to providing food for their populations. The inadequacy of current systems like the World Food Programme in the area of hunger mitigation means that new and more powerful global systems may be needed. Since national governments may resist internationalist interventions in land allocation and food production policies, serious humanitarian problems can arise. The idea is to allocate land for food production beyond the capitalistic allocation in order to provide the disentitled or non-entitled populations with enough food till growth and development gives everybody the cash resources to afford enough food and nutrition on the global food market.
Will the United Nations address this issue with the seriousness it deserves or will it be caught in a morass of underfunding and apathy like it has so often been in the past about so many of the positive agendas ? Will international economic agencies like the International Monetary Fund keep basic agricultural and industrial requirements of beleaguered nations while doling out their monetary and fiscal prescriptions or will they remain insouciant to these fundamental concerns ? The answers to these questions may well determine if modern civilization is going to conform to minimum standards of humaneness in the area of food. There can be no bigger failure for the United Nations than to remain apathetic to looming problems in the area of national food self-sufficiency and in the area of food transfer to countries that have difficulty achieving food self-sufficiency in the short run.
The current economic paradigm is one of economic management at the national level and trade at the international level governed by certain rules. As for economic management at the national level, most of the ideological debate has focused on the question of growth and distribution. And as for trade at the international level, the debate has been about whether trade should be conducted under multilateral rules or bilateral rules. However, little or no attention has been paid to the question of scarcity problems and distribution problems that transcend international borders for basic and crucial items like food and basic medicine. Countries caught in a certain stage of development may well find it difficult to provide basic food security and health security to its masses for years to come. If food scarcity becomes a more ubiquitous phenomenon worldwide due to the land use and fertilizer scarcity scenarios outlined above, the current approach involving underfunded and struggling programmes like the World Food Programme will become even more questionable. An international framework to ensure the right allocation of land and to ensure proper food distribution across international borders will probably become necessary. How this will intermesh with national politics is uncertain. When it comes to such basic items as food, how the United Nations deals with intransigence regarding sharing resources across borders may well become the litmus test of its relevance.
As for countries that fail to provide decent amounts of food and nutrition to their own hungry masses while advertising self-sufficiency in the areas of food production, the option of economic sanctions against them should be considered seriously as a human rights measure. Hundreds of millions of people are malnourished or live and die in starvation in countries with apathetic governments that fail to provide food to the people even though the resources exist. The long-term consequences of this apathy can be, and often are, more serious than those of wars or genocides or weapons proliferation. While the latter are serious issues that the United Nations needs to deal with, it needs to come up with mechanisms using which it can put pressure on national governments to meet achievable food distribution aims by creating the proper distribution channels and by eliminating corruption.
by C. Jayant Praharaj