An article today on the Science Alert website titled ‘Life in a hot, hungry world’ summarizes a number of statistics that I think worth noting for readers. I emphasize I have not checked these statistics for accuracy. As reported:

• the human population will reach 9.2 billion in 2050 – but human appetites are growing faster still. Together this means world food demand will more than double;

• the world is entering a time of acute water scarcity. Cities now take up to half of the water once used to grow food, and will redouble their demands as their populations swell to 7 billion mid-century, leaving only a diminished fraction of the water to grow their food;

• groundwater is vanishing in every country in the world where it is used for food production;

• a quarter of the world’s arable and grazing land is so degraded it can scarcely produce and the current loss – about 1% a year – spells disaster by mid-century unless reversed;

• by mid-century the world’s cities will occupy a land area the size of China and their recreational playground, an further area the size of the U.S. (I assume this means the Continental U.S.). Food production will be forced out into the most remote, degraded and unreliable regions;

• half the fertilizer applied on farms is wasted, and between farm and the consumer’s fork, half of all food is wasted. Most the nutrients in our sewage systems are lost;

• the world may already had passed ‘peak phosphorus’, meaning demand is now outstripping the finding of new resources;

• peak oil probably means that agriculture will, by mid-century, depend almost entirely on biofuels for motive power, which could in turn absorb a tenth or more of our food growing capacity. By 2020 we may be burning 400 million tonnes of grain a year – equal to the entire world rice crop – to keep cars on the road;

• agricultural research has been declining in every major country for thirty years. Funding for agricultural R&D has been stagnant since the early 1970s – 50 times more is now spent on arms than on agricultural R&D;

• nearly one-third of the world’s major fisheries have collapsed or are stressed; and,

• the climate is changing. Current forecasts suggest up to half the Earth may be in regular drought by the end of the century, causing major disruptions to food supplies in areas experiencing drought, heat, flooding, sea-level rise, and increased pressure from pests.

The article concludes that the foregoing brings with it the very real possibility of regional and global instability. This strikes me as an understatement. Simply put, if even some of the foregoing statistics prove accurate it strikes me the world as we know it won’t get to 2050 without a major war, plague or other horrifying event that will get world population and the ability of the world’s resources to support it into a sustainable balance. The article says that Defense experts in the UK and US already have warned about the risk of tidal refugee movements, failed states, wars and even nuclear confrontations arising out of regional famines.

The answer offered up by the author of the article is that “If we wish to avoid these wars, governance failures and refugee floods, the only sure answer is to secure the food supply. The world – including Australia – has to understand that agriculture policy is defense policy. It is refugee policy, immigration policy, environmental policy and climate as well as health, food and economic policy. No food, no stability, no government”. It seems to me that this conclusion is both oxymoronic and naïve. No one can make more land or more water. Accordingly, it strikes me it doesn’t matter what is done about agricultural matters if the world population increases to levels suggested and the good land and water is used for building and sustaining large population centers. The only sensible answer to what is forecast in the article is to take steps to reduce the population increase – which aside from social and other issues itself has inherent problems because it would lead to an increasingly aging population without a growing underlying population of young people to support the elderly, essentially how our present system (at least in the developed countries) is intended to operate. In any event, I consider the statistics quoted worthy of thought.

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