How Do You Feed Ten Billion People?

If you are nearing retirement age now, you were born into a world that had fewer than 3 billion people. If you are still alive in 2055, you will be living in a world that is likely to have 10 billion people.

Widespread famine has largely become a thing of the past, although there are still sporadic famines in sub-Saharan Africa. It has been over 50 years since mothers admonished their children to finish their plates because some poor starving child in China (which suffered 30 million deaths in the famine lasting from 1958 to 1961) or Ethiopia (which lost 1/3 of its population in a great famine in the 1890's and over 1 million people despite relief efforts in the 1980's) would be glad to have it. 

The "Green Revolution" of the 1940's through 1970's has more than tripled the world's food production, with the average person consuming 25% more calories in 2013 than in 1973, resulting an obesity epidemic in almost every part of the planet. But longer-term prospects are not entirely hopeful.

• In most of the USA, wheat yields are increasing about 2% per year. In most of Europe, in Russia, in Australia, and in India, where about 40% of the world's wheat is grown, however, wheat yields are declining.

• The USA, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and, surprisingly, Haiti, are managing to continue to increase corn (maize) production. Most of the world is not.

• Rice fields in Brazil are beginning to wear out from overproduction, as are rice production is declining in India, China, and the Philippines, although it is increasing in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Laos, and Thailand. Rice production is declining very quickly in North Korea.

• Massive population growth is causing many parts of the world to run out of water, particularly India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the southwestern United States. About 1.7 billion people rely on wells that are gradually going dry.

• The Ogallala aquifer, a vast underground lake underlying the irrigated fields of part of South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, is rapidly going dry, with many fields returning to native vegetation.
• Cities and farms increasingly compete for water in California, which produces over 10% of America's food supply.

The simple fact is, scientists don't know how the world can increase its food production to keep up with billions of new humans without cutting down even more rain forests, draining even more underground water tables, damming even more rivers, and relying even more heavily on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and genetically modified organisms (GMO). What can be done to prevent hunger after 2050? The likely answer is, a lot.

Preventing Hunger After 2050

One of the most effective ways to deal with the world's looming food crisis is also the simplest to understand: The world needs to stop wasting food. According to the United Nations Food Agency, every year about 2.8 trillion pounds of food (1.3 billion metric tons) is thrown away. That is 400 pounds (about 180 kilos) of food for every adult and child on the planet, over a pound (over 450 grams) of edible food every day.

Hundreds of millions of tons of fruit and vegetables are trashed because of imperfections, insect bites, or irregular size. Hundreds of millions of tons of grain are destroyed by exposure to heat, humidity, bugs, and rats. Hundreds of millions of tons of food spoil neglected in the refrigerator or forgotten on the cupboard. 

Simply stopping waste would seem to be a great way to fight future world hunger. However, even in 2050, food distribution systems are not likely to be perfect, so to ensure future food security, several more changes are possible on a regional, national, or even international level. Here are some possibilities:

• There are still rain forests to be cut down. Bulldoze them and plant crops in fields that will wear out and dry out in 5 to 10 years.

• There are still possibilities for genetically modified organisms. As patents for products like Roundup expire, companies like Monsanto will have to create new genetically modified crops that require newly patented agricultural chemicals anyway. We could hope that chemicals save the day.

• Desalination. Vast new oil and gas fields have been opened up by "fracking" (more properly termed fracing). We could rely on energy-intensive technologies to produce more water for more fields for more crops.

• Soylent. This chemical food substitute contains all the chemical nutrients identified in human nutrition. The chemicals are cheap because they are mostly made from petroleum products.

• Insects. People all over the world have eaten ants, grasshoppers, scorpions, and beetle larvae for thousands of years. They are high in protein, if usually also high in fat, although it's hard to catch enough for a meal.

Or we could just resolve it's too bad, let the 3 billion people yet to arrive on the planet fend for themselves. But to this writer, food conservation in combination with the farmland and agricultural technologies we have now seems like the optimal approach to providing for the next two generations.