Lester R. Brown

Full house: reassessing the earth's population carrying capacity.

After decades of steady growth, the worlds food supply is no longer keeping up with population increases. Production of fish and grain per person has slowed to the point where feeding the 90 million being added each year is possible only by reducing consumption among those already here. These are the findings in this fourth volume in the Worldwatch Environmental Alert series from the Worldwatch Institute. The bottom line, according to Lester Brown and Hal Kane, is that the worlds farmers can no longer be counted on to feed adequately the projected additions to our numbers. Achieving a humane balance between food and people now depends more on family planners than on farmers. This issue will increasingly preoccupy national leaders, reorder national priorities, and dominate international affairs. In this volume, the authors propose a global strategy to restore food security and a budget to implement it. Their global food security budget calls for stepped-up expenditures on both sides of the food/population equation. It includes investments not only to provide family planning services to all who want them, but also to eliminate the underlying causes of high fertility, such as female illiteracy. It also includes investments in an extensive reforestation and soil conservation effort, one that will arrest the deterioration of the agricultural resource base.

Food versus Fuel

Agriculturally-based alcohol fuel programs in food-exporting countries will become international issues as land is converted from food to fuel crops and the affluent world minority increases its demands and power at the expense of the poor. Brazil is the current leader in fuel crops, followed by the US, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and a number of developing countries. The effect this is having on per capita grain production is reflected in the decline of world cropland and the increase in food prices. The shift to massive energy crops will have social and political ramifications as countries weigh the environmental and economic attractions of alcohol fuels against the pressures they place on food production. The steps that could minimize the potentially adverse effects of fuel crops include careful international planning to warn food-importing countries, arrest the erosion of topsoil, and a food-pricing monitoring system. 30 references, 2 tables.

World population trends: signs of hope, signs of stress.

During the 1970s some changes have occurred in the area of population policies and trends. There has been both progress and failure. The growth in world populaton has begun to slow in both developed and developing nations. The apparent decline in the birthrate of China between 1970-1975 is the most rapid of any country on record and may be regarded as family plannings greatest success story. It reveals what a government committed to reducing fertility can accomplish when it deals with the problem on several fronts simultaneously. Another hopeful sign is the decline by 1/3 in the U.S. population growth rate between 1970-1975. Although most of the slowdown in the global population growth stems from declining birthrates in some poor countries population growth is being periodically checked by hunger-induced rises in death rates. The recent upturns in the national death rates represent a reversal of postwar trends. In some situations population growth now acts as a double-edge sword simultaneously contributing to growth in food demand and to reduced food output. It has become clear during the 1970s that land-based food systems can give as did oceanic fisheries under intense pressure. Population growth along with the lesser effect of rising affluence has pushed food consumption ahead of production in recent years and has become a major preoccupation for the entire world. In a world without an adequate system of food reserves increasing world food prices translate into increasing death rates among the poorest people. Crop failure in a rich country has an economic impact but in a poor country it can also have a measurable demographic impact. Attention is specifically focused on population trends 1970-1975; countries that are achieving or approaching stability; the tragic rise of death rates; and the population prospect.

In the Human Interest

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Facing the challenge of food scarcity: Can we raise grain yields fast enough?

After a half-century of global surpluses of wheat, rice, corn, and other grains, it is easy to be complacent about the food prospect for the twenty-first century. We have come to take for granted the supply of grain that provides half of humanity’s food energy when consumed directly and a good portion of the remainder when consumed indirectly in the form of livestock products.

Man, Food, and Environmental Interrelationships

Pressure on world food supplies is leading to the emergence of a global politics of food scarcity. The resulting high food prices and shortages are an inconvenience for affluent societies and individuals, but they place poor nations and the poor within them in a dangerous predicament. When global food reserves are low, the ability of the international community to provide relief and respond to emergencies such as droughts or crop failures is greatly diminished. The longterm trend is disturbing; global demand for foodstuffs is outrunning the productive capacity of the world’s farmers and fishermen.

Trends in Soviet agriculture

Militarily, the United States and Russia are roughly equally matched, but agriculturally there has been a dramatic shift in the balance of power during the last decade. Whereas both countries were exporters of grain in 1970, in 1981 Russia imported 45 m tons and America exported 115 m tons: more than one-half of the present Russian deficit will come from America. This imbalance, which is not limited to grain, has important political implications. Following the death of Brezhnev, who gave high priority to agriculture after his accession to power in 1964, his successor Yuri Andropov indicated in an important statement on 12 December 1982 that a comprehensive attack on weaknesses in the agricultural system will remain in the forefront of Soviet agricultural policy.

Twenty-Two Dimensions of the Population Problem

An examination of the economic social ecological and political facets of overpopulation portray the stresses and strains associated with continued population growth in a world already inhabited by four billion people. A lack of facilities and the effects of poor nutrition on intelligence make illiteracy especially common in areas of high population growth. Overfishing and pollution of oceans has lowered the productivity of oceanic fisheries and even at maximum levels oceanic production cannot meet food demands. Access to recreation areas is becoming increasingly limited. Waste has increased to a point where the ecosystem can no longer readily break it down and absorb it and pollution results. Inflation caused when demand exceeds supply is a result of large population gains. A growing share of all illness and death in the world today is directly attributable to human changes in the environment stemming from population growth. The recent downturn in per capita grain consumption the inability to rebuild grain reserves the acceleration of world dependence on North American grain exports and overgrazing are direct results of growing demands for food. Providing decent living quarters for a rapidly increasing population is extraordinarily difficult. Increasing amounts of carbon dioxide and dust in the atmosphere have changed the climate of large regions of the earth. The rural exodus has increased urbanization and crowding in both rural and urban areas has deleterious effects. Large population growth offsets gains in economic growth lowering the per capita income. Demand for land for agriculture and wood for fuel has caused serious deforestation. Energy and mineral demands cannot be met and water is in short supply. Health services cannot keep up with population growth. Individual freedom is compromised when limitations and guidelines must be imposed by the government for the common good.

Learning to live together on a small planet

International understanding, once a humanitarian virtue, is now a dramatic, urgent necessity: the interdependence of the different regions and countries of the world and the strain on limited resources are such that without understanding leading to co-operation there will be disaster. The following article by Lester Brown, head of the Worldwatch Institute, should serve to remind our readers that unless we all become educated to the grave problems facing humanity, the technical skills and general knowledge imparted by our shool and university systems may well become superfluous. [Ed.]

Crossing the Threshold?: Pressures on Earth's Biological Systems

Carrying capacity, a management tool used to determine how large a population a local biological system can sustain, should be applied to the global system. Fisheries, forests, grasslands, and croplands are the basic biological systems required for food and raw materials. Each has its own carrying capacity, beyond which it cannot support additional human life. Projecting the biological yield of these systems for positive resource management is important, but indications are that population growth is approaching a threshold limit. An increase in productivity, substitution of synthetic products, and reduction in demand are possible responses to this condition. 11 references.