It's 2050: Can We Feed Nine Billion People Sustainably?

The New Republic:

Sometime around 2050, there are going to be nine billion people roaming this planet--two billion more than there are today. It's a safe bet that all those folks will want to eat. And that's... an incredibly daunting prospect.

Still, not everyone's convinced that feeding nine billion people--and doing it in a sustainable fashion--is a totally impossible task.

Read the whole story: The New Republic

Comments

[JerryAguy]

09:43 PM on 02/06/2010

Sure if the Government gets out of the way and stops making crummy gas out of food as well as stopping paying farmers not to grow crops. Plants love CO2 maybe it'll come off the poison list.

[urchinsadrift]

11:18 PM on 02/06/2010

Well said

[pointy]

11:15 PM on 02/05/2010

9 billion? NO PROBLEM! many more of us will have to take part in food production and of course we'll have to change some bad habits but there is so much land available to grow food if we want to. Population control only comes with a sense of security and unfortunately for a third of the world's population that security is nowhere on the horizon. Imposing birth control won't work, unless you're a big fan of Hitler's methods. Encouraging birth control measures would be a good start but the U.S. and the catholic church have been working to abolish birth control in many countries.

[GetAbike]

05:54 PM on 02/05/2010

What a lame, happy-talk article.
Too many suppositions that do not fit the human condition as we know it.
And even if we do make it to 2050 and are able to feed the world with all these presumed changes, then what?
The author did not even address:
population growth.
Peak phosphorus.
Peak clean water.
There is more, but I will stop here.

Good luck all you people in 2050!

[JohnFromCensornati]

12:32 PM on 02/05/2010

Blessed are they who oppose birth control for they shall inherit the earth (and run it into the ground).

[seerickson]

01:38 PM on 02/05/2010

Like the demented idea using Bible verses of being blessed by "filling ones quiver" with as many children "as God sends" in order to replace the sinful and corrupted, or just those who have poor parenting skills in their estimation. So they don't really want those who don't fit their model to breed, its just part of their mutual self congratulation on their superiority, hiding the chronic shame that goes with that sub-culture of religious extremism. They do think when all the smoke clears they will be the only ones still standing.

[doctorkosan]

11:28 AM on 02/05/2010

The USA and the UN needs to head a global effort to limit the population on this planet. It is a finite space with finite food, energy and other resource capabilities. That is the problem to be worked on not the authors premise because the extrapolation of his premise of trying to feed an ever increasing population from a finite land base eventually becomes untenable.
It may not be popular politics and against some people's religious beliefs but that is too bad. It is a vagina not a clown car. Peolple who act otherwise do a disservice to humankind and the planet.

[LyssaBarnes]

10:29 AM on 02/05/2010

I hate to say it, but I suspect that despite our best efforts, disease will keep the population in check. Another factor will probably be the rise in birth defects due to poor nutrients in soil. Sooner or later we will have to seriously consider global population control.

[drkazmd65]

10:08 AM on 02/05/2010

Color me an optimist on this front,.... but we 'Can' feed 9 Billion people,... IF we chose to do it or economics forces us to.

Let me start off by saying I am NOT a vegetarian,... and likely will never be one. That being said, we could all cut back on our meat use. Meat is an excellent source of concentrated protein, minearals, and vitamins. However, feeding animals enough food to get them big enough to eat loses us a lot of potential calorie energy.

If we collectively cut back the quantity of meat we eat (in general - not absolutely) in developed countries, and instead opt for more vegetable protein (lentils are FANTASTIC!) even 1-2 days a week that alone would make a difference.

Then,... we have to figure out a workable means of getting the food to the people who need it, when they need it, at a price they can afford to pay (or give them the ability to grow most of it themselves).

But it isn't going to happen without either a lot of pain & anguish for the have nots, or without a lot of work & effort by the haves.

[mamacat]

05:07 AM on 02/05/2010

I remember when the news sources reported that the world population of humans had reached 3 billion souls, and now we are talking about reaching 9 billion by 2050? Isn't it time we said "enough", already?

[quillsinister]

06:29 AM on 02/05/2010

Yes. Long past time.

[grumpyfarmer]

12:46 AM on 02/05/2010

Another little pet peeve of mine, why is it that farmers are going to have to carry all the water in this whole sustainability thing. Our high school basketball team just traveled 75 miles to play a regular season game, how sustainable is that? How sustainable is the Superbowl? What about these Alaska cruises I always see, are they sustainable? Is NASCAR sustainable, what about Hollywood?

People have to eat. Growing food requires inputs that are demanded by other industries, and also will produce a degree of pollution. Why is it that my farming practices(such as my fuel usage) must meet some sort of unclear sustainability standard,while school districts all over the nation burn diesel hauling kids around to play ball(not to mention keeping them up half the night when they could study) or I have to compete with NASCAR for fuel for me to grow food, while that is entertainment? The nation as a whole has some real soul searching to do about the overall sustainability of our collective lifestyles, not just food production.

[quillsinister]

06:39 AM on 02/05/2010

Excellent point. However, the American meat industry is the largest user of fossil fuel, requiring not just the extensive machinery directly related to the animals' needs, but a seperate empire related to growing the animals' feed. Yes, we have to eat, but there is no rule saying that we have to make a slab of dead animal the center of every single meal ever. Americans do just that, and we need to stop.

A diet of mostly local, mostly seasonal, mostly (though not entirely) vegetarian food would ease our fossil fuel consumption by a more substantial margin than any other single factor.

You're absolutely correct that others should not get off the hook, but there's really little comparison in terms of overall consumption. You're the logical starting point. Apologies for the inconvenience.

[grumpyfarmer]

10:46 AM on 02/05/2010

We are the logical starting point because there are so few of us, and inconveniencing us(or driving us outright into bankruptcy) is and will be largely unnoticed by the general population, until it is far too late to do anything about it. Dealing with one of my points, I served on our local school board 8 years, I know the fuel usage of one tiny athletic department in one school in this vast nation compared to that of my farm. The reason the focus is on farmers is because at first, making things tougher on them will not be as widely noticed as doing something like limiting the distance a high school team can travel to play a ballgame. I also bring this up because in my area schools are up against the wall financially, yet no one is suggesting loudly at least that part of the reason might be extracurricular activities. My point is the same as it was, our entire society has sustainability issues, but the masses don't want to change their own lifestyle, far easier to point the fingers at others and expect them to sacrifice.

[grumpyfarmer]

12:39 AM on 02/05/2010

I have yet to figure out what true sustainable agriculture is. What I interpret to be most Huff posters definition is the way my great grandparents farmed, on 320 acres, half pasture half tillable, with 12 milk cows, 200 chickens, a handful of pigs and 10 or so beef cows. This would have been in the 19 teens and '20s. They grew mostly feed crops such as oats, corn and alfalfa to feed the livestock and the 14 workhorses, with maybe 40 acres of wheat for a cash crop. Yields of crops were a half to a third of what they are today, all nitrogen came from manure and what the alfalfa fixed. If you really want sustainable agriculture as defined by the users of this forum, you are going to need more farmers. I would guess a farm like this today might make an annual profit of $10000, and require the entire family for labor. Would any of you want to live off of $10000 per year, while your city cousins worked less and had much, much more?

[quillsinister]

06:45 AM on 02/05/2010

Actually, I don't think I'd mind so much. My last duty station was in Greece, where I lived among olive groves and goatherds, who haven't significantly changed how they do business in hundreds if not thousands of years. Oh, they took in tourism money in the summer, but they also led very simple, nonmaterialistic lives. Now that I'm back, I find I miss that setting.

I don't think that would work in America, though. Materialism is just who we are these days, but living like that in a country that hasn't gone collectively insane on the idea of profit before everything else might be a good thing in a few years. :-)

[pointy]

10:09 AM on 02/05/2010

There are ways to get better yields than you grandparents got and still be sustainable, maybe not as high as current practices but not much lower. Have there not been improvements made that affect yields and soil retention/water usage that are not derived from inputs but rather from a change in farming practice. There have been and there will be more. Yes, we need more farmers but we need those farmers to start growing food that nourishes people, not food that just fills them up with empty calories. In order to do that we need to redirect more of the subsidies toward fruits, vegetables and grains that are consumed by people directly. Farm subsidies are mostly directed to farms growing crops for the production of junk food, corn syrup starches, oils etc.
I think the system as it is, is seriously broken but we can't expect the farmers to fix it and we sure as hell can't leave it up to agri-business. We need to develop policies and strategies to get to a sustainable system, fund the research needed and help (subsidize?) the people like you, who feed us all, in making the transitions.

[RMankovitz]

09:29 PM on 02/04/2010

As a research scientist and author of several books on health, I subscribe to the hypothesis that the current human population far exceeds the planet’s carrying capacity, perhaps by double. Feeding the population is only part of the problem. We seem to be running out of safe places to dump the toxic wastes we generate, and may well drown in our own effluent.

From research on the effects of environmental toxins and GM foods on animals (illness and failure to reproduce), it could be just a matter of time until humans will feel the same effects - susceptibility to illnesses (such as pandemics and epidemics) for which there are no cures (perhaps already happening), and low sperm count in men and infertility in women (perhaps already happening). The resulting increase in death rate and decrease in birth rate will speed up the process used by nature to deal with those who exceed the carrying capacity of their environment – a path toward sustainability - or extinction.

Once the smoke clears, those humans still standing (if any) will be in the enviable position to start over to treat nature with the respect she deserves. Other societies that have failed to do so are extinct. In our absence, nature has millions of years to cleanse herself of our legacy, regenerate, create many new species, and perhaps evolve an improved human model.

Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com

[GetAbike]

05:34 PM on 02/05/2010

Agreed.
It can be simply put like this:
People, like microorganisms in a culture broth, will grow exponentially until an essential nutrient is exhausted.
The end.

[pointy]

08:01 PM on 02/04/2010

Not with GMO's!

[N0NDescript0]

05:10 PM on 02/04/2010

Not without GMO's...

[patrickmcdougal]

03:06 PM on 02/04/2010

What about Soylent Green?

[drkazmd65]

10:12 AM on 02/05/2010

Does it taste like chicken?
:D

[kaffegeek]

03:03 PM on 02/04/2010

"We" cannot feed anyone, Each individual can however feed themselves.

"we" is an imaginary social construct, in a world some people "want" but which does not exist.

Brett Bringardner
Founder
LibriLoop.com

[SolarPowerGuy]

03:29 PM on 02/04/2010

I'll bet you refuse to ride on public freeways, too.

And, you were buying carbon credits to offset your contribution to global warming before anyone else knew they existed.

Right?

[pointy]

10:16 AM on 02/05/2010

Judging from your delusional mutterings, I really doubt you could feed yourself.