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Will There Be Enough Food to Eat?

THE French call it nouriture. Greeks know it as trophé. To the Japanese it is shokuji. What is it in English? Food!

Whatever you call it in your language, does the thought of good food make your mouth water when you are hungry? Yes, good food is very desirable, delightful to the taste and nourishing to the body.

On the other hand, the thought of hunger is frightening. Its consequences are devastating. It stunts physical and mental growth and robs millions of their chance to lead a normal life. But it does more: It kills.

True, if you live in places such as Europe and North America, you may not give much thought to hunger. Of course, you may be distressed at the high prices you now have to pay for food, but few people in such areas are actually hungry.

Elsewhere it is a different story.

How Many Affected?

It may shock you to know that today about one billiona people are hungry. That estimate comes from the World Food Council, an agency of the United Nations. It is about 25 percent of the world’s population! Hence, many authorities consider the struggle to get enough to eat the greatest problem facing mankind.

But is the problem at least diminishing? No. “The world hunger problem is getting worse rather than better,” declared Sol Lonowitz, chairman of a United States presidential commission on world hunger. He added: “A major crisis lies ahead unless a concerted effort is made to avert it.”

Similarly, U.S. News & World Report said: “A food crisis more serious than the present energy crunch threatens world peace in the next 20 years unless the U.S. and other nations take bold action.”

Why is hunger a threat to world peace? Because the frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent standard of living is the most potentially explosive force in the world today. A billion angry and desperate people represent a real threat to international order.

The threat may be even greater. The Royal Bank of Canada estimates that “as much as 40 percent of the world population suffers from undernourishment.” That is over 1.6 billion people! As an example, in one African country it is said that 45 percent of the children die before they reach the age of five.

Why Worsening?

Why is the situation worsening? Are there not reports of more food being grown in some countries? Yes, there have been some increases. But world population has increased even faster.

Thus, on the average, there has been a net decrease in the amount of food available to each person. For example, a study by World-Watch Institute shows the following:

ANNUAL FOOD PRODUCTION PER PERSON WORLD WIDE

1970-76 Peak 1979

Fish 43 lbs. 36 lbs.

Beef 26 ʺ 24 ʺ

Mutton 4.2 ʺ 4 ʺ

Grain 754 ʺ 701 ʺ

What is the world population growth now? About 70 to 80 million annually, equivalent to a new Pakistan each year. In addition, such population growth is causing ever greater use of farmland for nonfarm uses. More homes, shopping centers, factories, roads, airports, schools and other things are being built on what used to be farmland.

Every day throughout the world, thousands of acres are taken out of food production for such uses. Sooner or later, mankind will feel the pinch of this missing farmland. In the United States the loss of actual or potential farmland is estimated to be an average of four square miles (10 km²) a day. That is the equivalent of a strip of land a half-mile (0.8-km) wide running from New York to San Francisco​—each year!

Overgrazing marginal farmlands is causing some of them to turn into deserts. A United Nations official estimated that already the Sahara desert is advancing southward at the rate of six kilometers (about four miles) a year, mainly because of overgrazing. Other deserts, including the Arabian, the Kalahari in South-West Africa, the Sonoran of Mexico and the southern United States, are reported also to be expanding.

The African magazine To the Point reported of these deserts: “They encroach on 60,000 km² [about 23,000 square miles] of arable land every year and in some areas the march proceeds at up to 11 km [7 miles] a year.” It added: “Scientists have now named the process ‘skin cancer of the earth’ and say it is spreading like a malignant growth. They estimate that up to one per cent of the world’s arable lands become deserts every year. . . . Most experts think that man is primarily to blame for the process. Wasteful agriculture and over-exploitation of the land . . . is the root cause.”

Another problem is the high price of fuel, a key cost in the production of food. Fertilizers, tractors, trucks and other machinery are dependent on petroleum. Agricultural expert Lester Brown said: “The combination of rising energy costs and the diminishing returns on the use of chemical fertilizers also contributes to the leveling off of grain and cereal production.”

Still one more negative element is being added to the already critical food supplies: more and more grain is now being turned into alcohol to use as fuel in cars and trucks. As countries use more grain to make fuel, the grain left for food will of necessity be less.

However, are not newer methods of food production turning the tide? For example, what about the “green revolution”?

[Footnotes]