Is the Era of Cheap Food Ending? [Taste Test]

Many can be glad to work out the Golden Arches topple for reasons nutritional, but some scientists think that with the human population growing and oil production past its peak, the era of cheap, abundant food is reaching its inevitable end.

Reviewing The arrival Famine, a new book by Australian scientist Julian Cribb, within the NYT , Mark Bittman summarizes:

Like many other experts, [Cribb] argues that we’ve got passed the peak of oil production, and it’s all downhill any more. He then presents evidence that we’ve got passed the peaks for water, fertilizer and land, and that we’ll all soon be made painfully aware that we have got passed it for food, as wealthy nations experience shortages and rising prices, and poorer ones starve.

The problem isn’t just overpopulation, Cribb contends, it’s overpopulation that’s soon to be matched by overconsumption-the ” two elephants within the kitchen,” he deems them. In his book, Bittman explains, Cribb spells out

the fate of a planet whose resources have, within the last 200 years, been carelessly, even ruthlessly exploited for the advantage of the minority. Now that most is starting to demand – or a minimum of crave – a similar form of existence, it’s clear that, population boom or not, there simply isn’t enough of the Euro-American standard of living to head around.

And it is precisely the rationale that genetically modified foods seem like an increasingly attractive option. The way in which things are trending-both with food markets and global diets-the demand for food is instantly outpacing what agriculture and husbandry can supply.

In response to Bittman’s review, Heather Horn at the Atlantic Wire rounded up some other takes on the problem of energy, overpopulation, and the food market.

Jeremy Harding, writing in regards to the future of food for the London Review of Books, noted overpopulation, the upward thrust inside the price of energy, and a shift in global nutrition which will be impossible to sustain:

Generations that after lived on grains, pulses and legumes had been replaced by more prosperous people with a taste for meat and dairy. Crops like maize which once fed many people directly now feed fewer of us indirectly, via a costly diversion from which they emerge inside the value-added type of meat. Global production of food – all food – should increase by 50 per cent over a better twenty years to cater for two billion extra people and deal with the rising demand for meat.

Horn also links to economist Tyler Cowen who says that a few of the those who are most occupied with the upcoming food shortage are ” often the ones with the least economically informed answers.” He doesn’t dismiss the worries in regards to the food market proposed by others, like Harding, but says instead that they’d be countered by new market models, like agricultural free trade.

What’s clear within the debate is that our population is growing, and it’s a population that’s eating more than ever. And if our traditional methods of producing food can’t sustain the most recent global diet, maybe more efficient, genetically modified foods will. [ TheAtlanticWire ]

Image credit Straightedge217 ]

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This post is tagged: attractive option, australian scientist, experience shortages, global nutrition, human population, london review of books, wealthy nations