In the previous blog post
we looked at some of the reasons for being pessimistic about the
ability of mankind to meet all its food needs in the 21st
century. Now let's look at some reasons for being optimistic that
mankind will be able to meet its food needs.
The Optimistic Case
Over
the past ten thousand years the number of persons fed per acre of
food has grown by a factor of perhaps a thousand times. Back around
6000 BC it would take perhaps 100 acres to feed a single person,
because both the planting of crops and the picking of crops was very
inefficient. These days a single person can be fed by only a single
acre. Modern day tractors are many times more efficient than the
horse-drawn plows used long ago, and modern day reapers are many
times more efficient than a single person using a scythe or cycle to cut and
gather crops.
We can assume that with
the growth of technology this trend will continue. Given that Google
is making fantastic strides in developing self-driving cars, we can
imagine there will be soon be robotized tractors and planting
machines that will be able to plant crops more efficiently than we
can do today. We will presumably also have robotized crop reaping
and crop picking machines that will allow grown food to be reaped far
more efficiently than today.
Moore's law is the law
that processor power roughly doubles every two years. Because of
factors such as Moore's law, you can now buy a computer a hundred
times more powerful than was available a few years back, and you can
also buy it at a much cheaper price. If we assume that Moore's law
will continue in the next decades, it may well be that within a few
decades super-efficient agricultural machines become available at a
low price throughout the world.
If that happens, the food
production per acre for the rest of the world (currently about 1.5
tons of grain per acre) may catch up to the current US food
production per acre (currently a little less than 3 tons of grain per
acre). If that happens it would probably be enough to meet the
world's food needs. It is estimated that we will need a productivity
of 2.5 tons of grain per acre to feed the world by 2050.
Another factor that may
increase the productivity per acre is the development of new
genetically engineered crops. Scientists are working on new
genetically engineered crops that will require less water, produce
more food, require less fertilizer, and require less pesticide. A
single breakthrough in this area could produce a huge increase in
global food production.
The concept of eating
insects is unattractive to most US citizens, but the United Nations
recently stated there is a huge potential for increasing global food
production by supplementing food with insects, which can be an
excellent source of protein. Such a possibility is at least something
that could be used as a last resort to stop famine.
There is also a huge
potential for increasing food supplies by decreasing global
consumption of meat, and using more land to directly grow crops
rather than using the land for raising livestock. Raising livestock
such as cows and pigs is a very inefficient way to produce food. The
amount of land and energy needed to produce a single kilogram of beef
would produce ten kilograms of grain. The production of livestock is
a major cause of global warming. It could well be that in the future
more and more people will become vegetarians to help reduce global
warming. If that happens (and grazing land is converted to grow grain), global food productivity may increase
sharply.
Another reason for hope is
the possibility that 3D printing technology will be harnessed to help
improve global food supplies. We are currently seeing explosive
growth in this technology, which uses a “layer by layer” approach
to manufacture items entirely different from the factory production
technique. Some scientists think that in the future people will have
3D printers that allow them to create food items from raw nutrients,
in a very efficient way that bypasses the whole traditional
agricultural process.
Despite all these reasons
for optimism, there is still a significant risk that in this century
there will be a huge shortfall between the amount of food we need and
the amount of food we produce. You can do your part to help minimize
this risk by sharply reducing (or ideally even stopping) your
consumption of meat, particularly red meat. If you don't have the
willpower to be a vegetarian, try skipping meat every day or 5 days a
week. You will help decrease global warming, and decrease the chance
of starvation in the future (not to mention decrease your chance of getting cancer and heart disease).
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