Thomas Malthus, in his famous essay, predicted that hunger, disease and famine would result from the earth’s food-producing capabilities failing to keep up with human population growth, because population grows exponentially (2, 4 ,8, 16Â etc) while food supplies expand linearly (1, 2, 3 ,4 etc).
He was, perhaps, 200 years early as several factors allowed food production to keep up with population growth until the last few years.
First of all, massive supplies from the vast new lands of the Americas and Australasia became available as settlers from Europe ploughed up ancient natural grasslands to grow grain. Slowly, the transport infrastructure of railways and shipping facilities were built allowing this food to be transported worldwide.
But the one thing that Malthus could not possibly have foreseen was that it would become possible to convert fossil fuels in to food through agriculture.
Fossil fuel powered machines have replaced horses and other beasts of burden, completely in the West but not quite yet in the developing world. This increased productivity many times over, but more significantly, it released the 30% of land that had been needed to grow the hay, oats and other food needed for the millions of horses used in farming, transport and the army.
Then came the discovery that nitrogen fertiliser could be manufactured using fossil fuels. This boosted yields enormously so that today it is estimated that on average, 40% of our grain yield is due to nitrogen fertiliser. Similarly, pesticides made from fossil fuels have boosted yields by reducing weed competition, killing insect pests and reducing fungal diseases.
Fossil fuels have also allowed large scale pumped irrigation, cheap transportation and better food storage by drying or freezing.
Unfortunately, there are no vast new lands to exploit, fossil fuels are finite and future supplies uncertain, while climate change is causing extreme weather events such as droughts and floods that are having an increasing negative impact on food production. At the same time world population continues to rise by 80-90 million per year, so that by 2025 there will be 8 billion people to feed.
The fact that Malthus’s prediction did not come true when he said it would may have given us a false sense of security that it never will. In my book Famine in the West I try to warn that if we do not take urgent action, famine is a certainty.
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