FOOD IN THE FUTURE
By G. C. L. BERTRAM
Is there, or can there be, enough food for everyone in the world provided it were suitably distributed? There is at present a great deal of bewilderment about this. A reasoned answer requires a wide examination of the question, without which the present situation cannot be maturely judged. The goal is a freedom from want such that every man, woman and child could develop to the full.in the service of his fellows. For very many, achievement would offer a food supply superior in quantity and quality to what has ever been available before. The evidence given at the Hot Springs Conference showed that a so per cent. increase in total present production might be required. The Food and Agricultural Organi- sation of the United Nations was formed in answer to the urge of the more enlightened. Understanding and effort have still to convert the urge into reality.
Factors more fundamental than economics must in the long run control the balance between plenty and hunger. Conquest of dietary poverty requires budgetary planning of a novel kind. Food-pro- duction, and with it the competing production of industrial materials derived from the annual growth of living animals and plants, must be equated with the total requirement of the world's population at an agreed standard of well-being far higher than the average of today. Production is not static from year to year, but is subject to conflicting trends, helpful and unhelpful, as well as to the vagaries of weather. Needs vary too. The total of mouths to be filled rises fast, by perhaps ten millions each year, in this period of unprece- dented growth of world-population. India alone is increasing in net population by a dozen a minute—over 700 an hour—and so annually requires a further addition of a million tons of food each year, even at the present low level of consumption. To balance total produc- tion with real requirement involves first assessing the relative rates of the factors and processes involved. Then conscious control, pro- perly the collective and deliberate exercise of the free wills of popula- tions of educated individuals, will inevitably be needed if opposing trends are to be modified so that production may genuinely meet requirement.
The relevant factors are many. Primarily agricultural production depends on the area cultivated. Virgin but properly cultivable lands still remain in some parts of the world, notably in South America. Their full and speedy utilisation requires the migration of agricul- tural labour, but political and cultural absorption are slow processes, which often make migration unwelcome to the receiving population. Irrigation, too, can result in increased cultivable areas and increased yields from lands at present cultivated. But already no Nile water enters the sea direct during several months each year, so completely is that river used in perennial irrigation. Already the irrigated area of India exceeds the combined total for the next ten most irrigated countries after India. Varietal selection, in crop plants and in strains of domestic animals, continues to offer great possibilities of increased yields. There are advances to be made in agricultural technique, in the use of fertilisers, both compost and chemical, improved rotations, superior tilling, better drainage and so on. But the optimism engendered by an appreciation of the theoretical possi- bilities is soon whittled away by a realisation of what seems to be immediately practicable. Whatev'er does remain may be decreased still further by contemplation of general agricultural practice over large, areas of the world and the slowness of its change under the acceptable democratic stimulants of advice and demonstration. However, advance is being made, and very quickly in some areas. The recently published East African ground-nut scheme is an encouraging example.
Unfortunately, there is another side to the picture. In many lands production is falling, or is in imminent danger of falling, through various processes of degradation. Particularly afflicted are the hotter and drier parts of the world. Few lands escape entirely. Serious soil-erosion by wind and water, following the maltreatment of the original vegetation, troubles the United States, the Dominions, India and East Africa, to mention only a few countries. Over - grazing, over-cutting of forests, firing, rapidly shifting cultivation, unsuitable systems of land tenure and other processes, all lead in the same direction. Even more serious may be a progressive decrease of basic fertility over a large proportion of the cultivated lands of the world. In the oceans, too, there is over-fishing. All these pro- cesses of degradation lead to smaller returns per unit area.
The processes of degradation, like their counterparts of practical and educational advance in husbandry, are progressive ; usually they are accelerative in action and cumulative in effect. Tke two groups of trends conflict. Both are dynamic ; both need precise measure- ment. It is the resultant balance, actual production in the years to come, which must be collated with fast-mounting human need. At present there is no proof and little probability of any early marriage, which might beget a higher standard of nutrition and well-being for every one of the world's 2,000,000,000 people. The present is a period of uneasy flirtation between supply and need. Bengal famine and German hunger are local crises in a world affair whose end cannot yet be foreseen. Past gluts have been spurious, representing inefficiency in distribution, under contemporary economic influences, and not the satisfaction of total legitimate need on the world scale.
This is not the place to put forward explanations or calculated predictions of changes in human numbers, and consequently human needs. However, unless the disasters which we strive to avoid in world affairs are to come upon us, it is clear that extensive, but far from uniform, further increases in human numbers will occur in the world as a whole in the next few decades or generations. The peoples fringing Asia to the south and east, together more than half the total of the world, are worst afflicted. For it is broadly true to say that these populations, which are increasing fast, are already among the densest, and, having the lowest standards of living and least purchasing-power, stand in the greatest need of more food. At the same time, the barriers to their migration are higher now than they have ever been. For a period, too, more food, if it can be provided, will result in still more rapid increase.
That is the canvas upon which our efforts and our consciences, with F.A.O. as our chosen instrument, must paint the pattern of the future. Now, more than ever before, there is the realisation that the many receive less than is required for full health and the development of individual personality. That is all. The picture has yet to be painted, and the paints are in our hands. The subject is difficult and dynamic. Hunger and shortages will continue. There will be conflict in the consciences of those who can grow and pur- chase plenty. Surely the time must come when we shall realise for ourselves what every farmer knows already for his stock. For the attainment of any desirable standard of nutrition and well-being, in the presence of any, particular or existent state of total productivity, there must be an optimum number of human beings. This is *so whether the optimum be judged on a regional or on a world basis, and whether we are yet capable of its precise definition or not.
Departure from the optimum is inevitably accompanied by a degree of misery. On the behaviouristic, mental and spiritual levels, too, an optimum population is a reality. Those responsible for civil order in great eastern cities are well aware of that. Equally conscious are the hermits.
Previous page
