Start canning: world to run out of food around 2050
Here we were thinking that the coming century would herald nothing but flying cars, weird haircuts and sweet video games, but the reality sounds much more dismal. New environmental studies have predicted future food catastrophe. At the forefront is Julian Cribb, a distinguished science writer, who foresees Earth beginning to run out of food by 2050.
In his new book, The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It, Cribb observes, “The world has ignored the ominous constellation of factors that now make feeding humanity sustainably our most pressing task—even in times of economic and climatic crisis.” The impending food shortage is occurring faster than climate change, he continues, as the population is set to hit 9.2 billion by 2050, and demand for food will likely outstrip production.
We’re having a hard time deciding whether to throw this into the “alarmist” pile or not, though. The Economist, for example, in its The World in 2011 issue, takes a less apocalyptic view of the world’s future population growth. While we certainly hope the Economist is right, it probably couldn’t hurt for world leaders to follow Cribb’s advice to guarantee a future global food supply. Though we wonder if he’s taken into account the effect of having replicants (which will, no doubt, exist by 2050) do our farming for us.
• Earth’s gravest challenge: Not enough food to go round [New Zealand Herald]
• The seventh billion [Economist]
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Here we were thinking that the coming century would herald nothing but flying cars, weird haircuts and sweet video games, but the reality sounds much more dismal. New environmental studies have predicted future food catastrophe. At the forefront is Julian Cribb, a distinguished science writer, who foresees Earth beginning to run out of food by 2050.
In his new book, The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It, Cribb observes, "The world has ignored the ominous constellation of factors that now make feeding humanity sustainably our most pressing task—even in times of economic and climatic crisis." The impending food shortage is occurring faster than climate change, he continues, as the population is set to hit 9.2 billion by 2050, and demand for food will likely outstrip production.
We’re having a hard time deciding whether to throw this into the “alarmist” pile or not, though. The Economist, for example, in its The World in 2011 issue, takes a less apocalyptic view of the world’s future population growth. While we certainly hope the Economist is right, it probably couldn’t hurt for world leaders to follow Cribb’s advice to guarantee a future global food supply. Though we wonder if he’s taken into account the effect of having replicants (which will, no doubt, exist by 2050) do our farming for us.
• Earth's gravest challenge: Not enough food to go round [New Zealand Herald]
• The seventh billion [Economist]){kind=link}
Would we still run out of food by 2050 if more people chose a vegetarian diet and we moved away from factory-farming livestock? A meat-based diet requires 7 times more land than a plant-based diet. It’s not too late to change these stats, you know.
Sure, pass the steak.
Did someone say steak?
Tracey makes a good point, but a world over ran with cows stinky stinky. If we maybe went back to eating like hmmmm I guess I can’t say humanly…Maybe like cave men where protein was hunted and eatn once a week maybe less.
Sorry I love a good steak, lamb chop, chicken thigh, bison rib, bacon, turkey, pork loin, elk steak etc…but Tracey is right basing our eating with a tad more influence from the veggie people could help not only in land but also fat kids and so many other health related items. But for now BLT for brekkie.
Tracey: It’s actually a bit ignorant to assume that everyone switching to a vegetarian diet would solve the food crisis. A plant-based diet is not entirely sustainable either, and doesn’t take into account seasonality of food and different climate zones. In fact, a strictly vegetarian — or, especially, vegan — diet feeds very heavily off of unsustainable agricultural practices.
Factory farming is definitely a problem, but thoughtless, blanket solutions are not really going to help. In fact, a person who chooses to eat sustainable meat from naturally-raised livestock does more to fight factory farming through buying power than any vegetarian can.
People SHOULD be eating significantly more plant-based foods and significantly less meat, particularly in North America, but you have to realize that switching everyone to a vegetarian diet would actually be disastrous to our whole ecology.
I’ll be dead by then anyway. Pass the seal.