The End of Doom Read Online Free PDF Page A

International Food Policy Research Institute projects that farmers will have to produce about 70 percent more food than they do today in order to provide the projected population in 2050 with a nutritionally satisfactory diet.
    The journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences) devoted its September 27, 2010, issue to analyzing the issue of global food security through 2050. In one of the specially commissioned research articles, it is projected that world population will reach around 9 billion by 2050, and that in the second half of the twenty-first century, “population stabilization and the onset of a decline are likely.” Can the world’s farmers be reasonably expected to provide enough food for 9 billion people by 2050?
    Two other articles in the special Royal Society issue on global food security conclude yes. A review of the relevant scientific literature led by Keith Jaggard from Rothamsted Research looks at the effects of climate change, CO 2 increases, ozone pollution, higher average temperatures, and other factors on future crop production. Jaggard and his colleagues conclude: “So long as plant breeding efforts are not hampered and modern agricultural technology continues to be available to farmers, it should be possible to produce yield increases that are large enough to meet some of the predictions of world food needs, even without having to devote more land to arable agriculture.”
    Applying modern agricultural technologies more widely would also go a long way toward boosting yields. In his 1997 article “How Much Land Can Ten Billion People Spare for Nature?,” published by the National Academy of Engineering, agronomist Paul Waggoner argued that “if during the next sixty to seventy years the world farmer reaches the average yield of today’s U.S. corn grower, the 10 billion will need only half of today’s cropland while they eat today’s American calories.”
    University of Minnesota biologist Ronald Phillips points out that India produces 31 bushels of corn per acre now, which is at the same point US yields were in the 1930s. Similarly, South Africa produces 40 bushels (US 1940s yields); Brazil 58 bushels (US 1950s yields); China 85 bushels (US 1960s yields). Today’s modern biotech hybrids regularly produce more than 160 bushels of corn per acre in the Midwest. For what it’s worth, the corporate agriculture giant Monsanto is aiming to double yields on soybeans and cotton by 2030. Whether or not specific countries will be able to feed themselves has less to do with their population growth than it does with whether they adopt policies that retard their economic growth.

    An Overpopulated Nightmare?
    Will the twenty-first century be an overpopulated nightmare, as Stephen Emmott asserts? There are good reasons to doubt it. First, let’s take a look at the latest population projections by the United Nations. Every two years the United Nations Population Fund issues estimates for future population. In their latest report, World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision, demographers at the United Nations boosted projected world population numbers by 600 million. The UN experts offer low-variant, middle-variant, high-variant, and constant fertility trends. The new estimates of the middle-variant projections of future population in 2050 increased from 9 billion in the UN’s 2010 Revision to 9.6 billion and from 10 billion to 10.9 billion by 2100.
    The UN’s middle-variant projection is generally taken to be the most likely path of future population growth. The difference between the low- and the high-variant projections is basically one child. In the new low-variant projection, world population would reach 8.3 billion by 2050, whereas the high-variant projection would result in a population of 10.9 billion by then. As the report explains, “Thus, a constant difference of only half a child above or below the medium