A belief popularized by vegetarians and those opposed to the modern agronomy is that the world could better feed everyone on less cultivated land if we all gave up eating meat, or at least greatly reduced our consumption of it. The current food crisis has revived that argument.
Humans are inherently meat and fruit eaters as our large brains require an amount of energy our digestive system could not process, except for the provision of food that is more energy dense than grains and vegetables. This is a conclusion drawn from the peer-reviewed literature in anthropology and primatology.
Thanks to modern food processing and chemistry, which the vegans scorn, we can obtain more calorie-rich and nutritionally dense foods than can be found in "nature" to obtain essential nutrients, such as vitamin B12 which previously could only be obtained from animal products. Of course, if vegans wish to have their grain contaminated with as many insect parts, rodent hairs and droppings as some of the early agriculturalists endured, they might get enough B12 without the synthetic supplement.
If we all become lacto-ovo vegetarians, allowing ourselves dairy and eggs, who will eat the calves that are born to stimulate the cow’s lactation? Who will eat the cow when she is no longer producing milk? What about the chickens when they are no longer laying eggs?
The increased yields in grain production of the much maligned green revolution have been driving the expansion of food production, allowing for an increase in daily per capita consumption of calories, or more accurately kilocalories, to somewhere between 2,600 and 2,800 calories from roughly 1,800 or 1,900 calories. Contrary to much popular misinformation, the major beneficiaries of the Green Revolution, this triumph of science and technology in the form of synthetic fertilizer and plant breeding, have been the poorest and most vulnerable of the world’s population. Since 1960, the number of people going without food has fallen to 850 million people out of a population of 6.7 billion from 1.5 billion people out of a 3 billion population. Rice production has increased to almost 300 percent since 1960 while using the same amount of water in its production. Prior to the wave of price increases, the real price of rice was roughly 40 percent of its 1960 price. (Similarly, the real price of wheat was about 50 percent of its 1960 price.)
Contrary to the monoculture mythology, the amount of land cultivation for primary grain reached its peak around 1980 as increased demand for diversified diets led to a shift from land under cultivation for grain to a nearly threefold increase in the percentage of land under cultivation for fruits and vegetables since 1980. Farmed fish production has increased even more rapidly. The improved nutrition leading to longer life expectancies and taller average height is obvious to anyone who has traveled to Asia, among other places.
Increased grain yields have, for a time, been able to accommodate the reduction in land under grain cultivation, the increase in population and the demand for food that was growing faster than population. Unfortunately, the decades long railing against modern "industrial" and non-government organization lobbying brought about a steady decline in domestic and international agricultural research funding.
This was further transformed into opposition to agricultural research and development in biotechnology as the NGOs skillfully convinced the public there was controversy in science concerning its safety – where there often was not.
Given the growing virulent opposition to "industrial" agriculture and agricultural research, it was inevitable that yield increases would start slowing. By the beginning of this century the world was eating more than it produced, driving grain reserves to perilously low levels. All of this was set in motion long before the upsurge in biofuel production from food crops, which I personally strongly opposed. Tragically, those who have contributed so much to the creation of this crisis are now vociferously advocating returning to the low yield agricultural practices that were inadequate to feed a population less than one third of that today.
DeGregori, a professor of economics, can be reached via [email protected].
