Proving Robert Wrong

 

 

"The war against hunger is truly mankind's war of liberation"

 John F. Kennedy

Folks in my generation have screwed up a great many things. However, for some reason, most of us "baby boomers" have been united on one very important quest. While in school, many of us learned about a British scholar named  Reverend Robert Thomas Malthus. In 1789, he started writing a very famous treatise entitled An Essay on the Principle of Population. It covered many aspects of society and social justice issues during the time it was written. However, the part of his work which seemed to resonate with my generation was this - as the population of the world increases, it will eventually outgrow the resources to feed itself.

First some stats. This year the population of the world could hit 7 billion. We are close now and the next benchmark is within reach. According to the World Hunger Education Service, close to 1 billion people go to bed hungry every night. If not for the unheralded advances in agriculture, the number of 1 billion would be much higher. For example, besides feeding our own population, American farmers export 45 percent of their wheat and 34 percent of their soybeans. In 2011, we exported about 90 million tons of grain just to China alone. We send food all over the world to help ameliorate hunger and suffering.
 
That being said, the following was taken from an article (Huffington Post, May 2012) which contained some interesting facts:

Hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity. For the past two decades, the rate of global food production has increased faster than the rate of global population growth. The world already produces more than 1 ½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That's enough to feed 10 billion people.

In reality, the bulk of industrially-produced grain crops goes to biofuels and confined animal feedlots rather than food for the 1 billion hungry. The call to double food production by 2050 only applies if we continue to prioritize the growing population of livestock and automobiles over hungry people.

I found this article to be simply amazing. We can produce enough food to feed 10 billion people! And that is with today's technology! Just think of how much we can produce by 2050. We continue to prove Robert wrong - we can feed a population which is getting ready to crest 7 billion people.

Our biggest challenge in the future will not be the robust nature of our hybrid crops; it will not be the fertilizer, herbicides or pesticides we have developed; it will be hydration. As much progress as we have made in the last century increasing crop productivity, many of our farms are still subject to the vicissitudes of weather. If it rains too much, bad; if it rains too little, bad; if it rains at the wrong time, bad; if it rains at the right time with the right amount, good.

We are draining our aquifers at an alarming rate. When they are gone, we are in big trouble. We have the technology, but not the national will, to produce fresh (not potable) water from water farms. Water can be used as a commodity - a cost of doing agribusiness. We can have the best, most drought resistant crops in the world - however, if we go two months without rain, we get nothing.

Sorry Robert, we can still prove you wrong. We believe that feeding the world is the right thing to do, and we have the resources to do it. As we have been blessed with amazing capacity to produce, we will share those blessings with others which are not as fortunate. It is the right thing to do. Do we like to prove Robert wrong? Absolutely! It is the American thing to do.