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| Can Global Food Production Keep Up With Population Growth? |
Humans are a very successful species. In the past hundred years alone our population has grown from around two billion to over seven and a half billion just twenty years ago our population was only six billion.
Our species has expanded tremendously over the course of our time on earth and we now, inhabit many vastly different environments around the globe. There's very little that the human race can't overcome and that's led some to ask the question are we too successful will there come to a point at which we simply have too many mouths to feed and not enough food to go around.
In this article, we'll examine the current state of food production around the world and determine roughly how many humans our agriculture is capable of supporting.
Let's get one thing out of the way upfront we're nowhere near the earth becoming overpopulated. The only people who make this claim are acting in bad faith usually to push reprehensible agendas like eugenics. Depending on the population models you use the planets carrying capacity could be up to forty billion people it's just a matter of how those people consume.
Now let's take a look at the current state of agriculture and hunger around the world. As of 2018 about 800 million people around the world experienced a lack of sufficiently nutritious food earning them the designation hungry most of these people live in regions with underdeveloped agricultural systems like Sub-Saharan Africa but a lack of agricultural infrastructure is only part of the problem. Regions that are embroiled in conflict or that have high levels of poverty also suffer from widespread hunger war leads to poverty, poverty to hunger and hunger reinforces poverty. It’s a deadly cycle that is very difficult to break but even while nearly a billion people lack reliable access to nutritious food global food production is humming along nicely.
It's estimated that the world's farmers produce enough food to feed one-and-a-half times the total world population that's over 10 billion people. A population we're not expected to reach for another 30 years at least. If we produce that much food why do so many people suffer hunger and starvation this is a multi-faceted problem waste inefficient distribution and climate change all play major roles in preventing the efficient disbursement of food to the world's at-risk populations.
Let's start with the problem of waste. It’s estimated that globally 30 to 40 percent of all food is wasted that is a massive amount of food the reasons for this waste vary by country.
India, for example, loses 30 to 40 percent of their fresh produce because they lack cold storage infrastructure in many regions. In other countries like the US famous for its massive portions much of the waste comes from people simply throwing away large amounts of food because they have too much on their plates and large grocery chains just dump excess food because it's cheaper than transporting it to places that could put it to good use.
This is where distribution comes in why repackage and distribute unused food if there's not a financial incentive to do so. In recent months we've seen American farmers leave mountains of potatoes to rot and dump hundreds of gallons of milk down the drain because the market dried up then there's the looming threat of climate change. We're already beginning to see the adverse effect of a rapidly changing global climate most notably with more violent weather the spread of disease and the destruction of crops.
It’s estimated that by 2050 the United States Midwest will see at least a 20% decline in corn yields as will Indonesia and Brazil will see a 16% reduction. Some colder regions will become too warm to support cold weather crops warmer areas will become too hot and coastal regions will experience too much rain of course there will be some parts of the world that actually become more hospitable to some crops but these will not be enough to offset the loss of production in other regions.
Now we see the real heart of the problem we already produce enough food to feed the entire world population but if we don't safeguard and update our existing methods of food production and the population continues to grow as projected the same old problems of waste distribution and climate change will make it even more difficult to keep everyone fed.
So what kind of solutions do we have for starters we could transition to a less environmentally damaging source of protein meat animals are a major contributor to climate change add to this the fact that they require large amounts of land and food themselves not to mention the inhumane nature of the animal agriculture industry and you've got a strong argument to transition to more efficient and humane sources of protein or at least replace red meat with poultry which is much less environmentally damaging.
Another promising advancement in farming is the development of indoor vertical farms these highly productive farms grow all sorts of nutritious foods in a climate controlled environment where they're protected from the elements and can be installed right in densely populated hubs like major cities making distribution a much simpler process. Vertical farms also take up much less space than traditional outdoor farms because they're contained within buildings and plant upwards instead of outwards regarding waste and distribution well that depends on the country places that lack refrigeration could obviously make an investment in that area but in wealthy countries like the US. It’s a bit more difficult the US produces a huge amount of food and much of it is wasted simply because of our extravagant lifestyle.
We have a major obesity problem in America but we also have over 37 million people going hungry coincidentally that's the same number as the amount of Americans living in poverty. As we saw earlier poverty and hunger is a self-reinforcing cycle one easy step we could take is mandating that all large grocery chains donate their unsold food to homeless shelters soup kitchens and other charitable groups. There is no reason for tens of thousands of tons of food to end up in dumpsters behind the store.
One final method to help reduce local hunger and improve community resiliency is to develop mutual aid programs. Mutual aid in a nutshell means looking out for those in your community every person being willing to help every other person when they need it take the Seattle nonprofit city fruit for example the city of Seattle has tons of fruit trees and much of the fruit those trees produce ended up rotting on the ground not doing anyone any good. A group of people saw a way to help fulfill a need and started collecting fruit from around the city and distributing it to communities that lacked access to nutritional food. Every year city fruit collects and distributes tens of thousands of pounds of nutritious local fruit and helps keep their community healthy and resilient this type of local organizing can be done around the world.
Identifying useful local resources and building systems of mutual aid to strengthen communities this kind of compassionate and egalitarian work combined with investment in new climate proof farming techniques could drastically reduce the number of people suffering from hunger the world over. We already produce all the food we need it's just a matter of setting our priorities straight and making sure we invest in the means to distribute food to the people that currently don't have the access they need. It'll take a lot of compassion and hard work.