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Food and Population -- the Environmental Nexus

Why Cover Food and Population?

How will the world feed the 2.3 billion additional mouths expected by the year 2030? The link between food and population is worth covering because nearly a billion people on the planet are undernourished. Furthermore, the effort to feed all the world’s population in many places threatens to degrade the environment, raising concerns about the Earth’s ability to sustain its human population with adequate food supplies. Finally, the issue could give the United States a chance to play a role on the world stage as a "good guy."

According to United Nations agencies, some 800 million people worldwide are malnourished: 777 million of those hungry live in the developing world, and 177 million of them are children. At the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome, leaders declared a goal of cutting world hunger in half by 2015. But achieving that goal remained in doubt as leaders met in again Rome June 10-13, 2002, for a "Five Years Later" summit.

Story Ideas

1. Are agricultural producers in your area part of the massive U.S. agricultural export economy? What do the longer-term forecasts for global population, food production, and food requirements foretell for producers in your area?

2. Any action by world leaders at the Johannesburg Summit with regard to food security? See http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/.

3. How will the Farm Bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush on May 13, 2002, affect the role of U.S. farmers in feeding a hungry world? How do current funding levels for food aid programs compare with historic levels and with the need abroad? What about food aid funds in the fiscal 2003 appropriation now before Congress?

4. What trade issues might help or hinder U.S. farmers in exporting food to hungry nations? Do food export subsidies in foreign nations hurt their own hungry populations as well as U.S. farmers? What policy stands has the U.S. government taken on these issues? What will the Bush Administration’s negotiating goals be, now that it has the "fast-track" trade negotiating authority from Congress, signed into law August 6, 2002? What implications does the "Post-Doha" round of negotiations under the World Trade Organization have for world hunger?

5. Will biotechnology -- the use of genetically modified crop and animal strains -- help or hurt efforts to abolish hunger worldwide? Biotech firms argue these methods can offer much in increased yields, reduced loss to pests, higher nutritional content, etc. But critics in the United States and in developing nations say biotech is incompatible with the small-scale, subsistence agriculture, which is the margin of survival in many impoverished rural areas. The need for companies to make a profit -- exemplified by the "Terminator" technology which produces sterile seeds -- may only leave farmers in developing countries economically dependent on large companies, they say.

6. Check out what happened at the "Conference on Sustainable Food Security for All by 2020_ -- aka the 2020 Conference, in Bonn, Germany, September 2001. http://www.ifpri.cgiar.org/2020conference/index.htm

7. Is population growth itself the key variable determining whether the Earth’s future millions thrive or starve? Or is it the context in which population growth occurs: agricultural technology, demographic trends, transportation and distribution issues, internal politics, trade patterns, corruption, and more? How does family planning fit into the rural development and economic reform programs that could bring a well-fed future to the Earth’s hungry millions?

Background and Context

The environmental connections between food security and population growth are many and profound. Their urgency and complexity offer an object lesson in why good media coverage of these issues is so important -- and so difficult.

The vintage "Population Bomb" thesis of the 1960s -- that unchecked population growth would eventually use up food-producing resources and create scarcity -- has proved somewhat simplistic and unhelpful in understanding the problems in the world we live in today. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s recent report, World Agriculture: Towards 2015/2030, notes two comparatively noncontroversial projections: first, that global population growth will slow down by 2030, and second, that the number of hungry people in developing countries will fall from about 770 million today to about 440 million in 2030.

That’s the good news, but it can be misleading. Those 440 million hungry people will still be 440 million too many -- not merely numbers but suffering individuals. Moreover, by 2030, the world’s population will have grown from the current 6 billion-plus to about 8.3 billion, and there will be a cost to feeding those extra 2.3 billion mouths, including an environmental cost.

The problem, it turns out, isn’t merely that the Earth’s growing population could exceed its "carrying capacity," but that the growth itself could reduce that carrying capacity.

Feeding world population is not just a "global" problem, but also a problem specific to certain parts of the world and certain classes of society. Global averages don’t tell the whole story. Right now, about 99 percent of global population growth is occurring in the developing world.

It often boils down in specific places to problems seemingly far afield from the application of agricultural or contraceptive technology -- social and economic justice, war, migration, corruption, land tenure, cultural tradition, religion, ideology, women’s and children’s rights, food storage and transportation issues, market and trade issues, etc.

In many cases, the "solution" to both overpopulation and under-nourishment is the same -- rural development. In many impoverished parts of the world, large families are an understandable human response to economic and food insecurity. Aid agencies today seek to bring developing nations to the point of "demographic transition," where greater economic security has actually proven the most reliable way of reducing population growth -- ending the cycles of desperation that only produce more hungry mouths.

Environmental Issues/Costs

Optimism about the Earth’s ability to feed its future population may be Pollyannaish if it ignores one central, paradoxical problem: Simply put, the human species’ efforts to feed itself can end up severely damaging the resource base that provides the food -- land, water, air, and ecosystems.

Cropland Degradation: About one-sixth of the world’s agricultural land area is now degraded to the point of impaired productivity because of overgrazing and poor farming practices, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. As much as 40 percent is impaired to some degree. That amounts to an area the size of the United States and Mexico, with 12 to 17 million more acres degraded every year. Erosion and nutrient depletion aren’t the only way soil gets degraded. Irrigation eventually causes salination of some soils, rendering them permanently unusable.

Deforestation/Land Use Change: The world is estimated to have lost perhaps half of its forests since agriculture began about 8,000 years ago -- most of that in the 20th century, when global population grew from less than two to more than six billion. Clearing land for agriculture caused much of that change. As natural forests and grasslands are replaced with cropland and pasture, the Earth’s population is losing as well as gaining. Forests not only provide biodiversity, they provide clean water, slow down climate change, and offer sustainable sources of fuel and building materials if not overused.

Fertilizer and Pesticide Runoff: Agricultural productivity worldwide has stayed ahead of population growth largely because of a wide array of technological developments and improvements in farming practices. Even before the "Green Revolution" in plant breeding, artificial fertilizers, and chemical pesticides contributed to enormous gains in feeding the world’s hungry -- and still do. Again, the blessings are mixed. When they run off into waterways, the same fertilizers boost algae that ultimately choke off oxygen and kill the fish that may also contribute to a healthy diet. Pesticide runoff, likewise, can have harmful effects to both human health and ecosystems that countervail their benefits. Proper use is key.

Monoculture and Genetic Diversity: As humans have settled the globe over the millennia, their survival strategies have been closely adapted to the climate, ecosystems, and terrain where they live. Subsistence hunting, gathering, herding, and agriculture are deeply enmeshed with the cultural traditions of people in specific localities. This has led to an abundance of locally adapted crop and animal strains -- such as the potatoes grown by Andean tribes (now considered by first-world gourmets to be part of Earth’s genetic wealth). Such strains often have special hardiness, drought tolerance, or disease resistance. This genetic heritage, and the local-culture growing practices that produce it, are essential to global "food security." It may be short-sighted to think all the world’s future food problems can be solved with freighters full of western wheat or rice. The huge fields full of genetically identical plants -- "monoculture" -- have sometimes proved disastrously vulnerable to new or unexpected diseases or pests. The threat is that the miracle high-yield strains that dominate industrial agriculture may lead to loss or extinction of many of the more resilient traditional strains.

Climate Change: The worldwide growth of human population is one of the essential causes of human-induced climate change. Global warming, in turn, will have profound effects -- both helpful and harmful, and often unpredictable -- on agricultural productivity. Sea level rise will take out significant amounts of low-lying and alluvial cropland, especially in nations like Bangladesh. Increased drought will hurt crops in some areas even as increased precipitation may help crops in others, and it may be a matter of blind luck whether a given nation is helped or hurt. Human agriculture has adapted successfully to climate change throughout history (and civilizations have disappeared, also often, when it hasn’t). (http://www.fao.org/waicent/faoinfo/sustdev/EIdirect/EIre0045.htm)

Water Resources/Irrigation: Agriculture is the largest use of water in most places -- using about 70 percent worldwide, primarily for irrigation. Water is scarcer than land in many places, and often is the limiting factor in how much food the land can produce. More efficient use of irrigation water is easily achievable -- which would mean not only more food for the hungry, but also less stress on the environment. Not all irrigation water is a renewable resource. In many places (including the U.S. high plains), water is being "mined" from aquifers faster than it is being replaced. "Growing More Food With Less Water," Scientific American, February 2001, by Sandra Postel (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006AB09-13AC-1C7184A9809EC588EF21&pageNumber=1&catID=2)

Players and Sources

Food And Agriculture Organization (United Nations): "World Agriculture: Towards 2015/2030" (http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/y3557e/y3557e00.htm#TopOfPage). Press contact (North America): Michael Hage, (202) 653-0011, michael.hage@fao.org (http://www.fao.org/)

United Nations Population Fund: The UN’s official population organization. Especially helpful is their publication, "Footprints and Milestones: Population and Environmental Change -- The State of World Population 2001. "Food for the Future: Women, Population, and Food Security," (http://www.unfpa.org/modules/intercenter/food). Press contact: William Ryan, (212) 297-5279, ryanw@unfpa.org. (http://www.unfpa.org/)

Congressional Research Service (Library of Congress): "Agricultural Trade and Foreign Food Aid," by Geoffrey S. Becker, in Agriculture Policy & Farm Bill Briefing Book (http://www.cnie.org/nle/agbill/ebagr10.html)

"Agricultural Export and Food Aid Programs," (IB98006), by Charles E. Hanrahan, June 14, 2002 (http://cnie.org/NLE/CRS/abstract.cfm?NLEid=23549)

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service:

-- FAS Homepage: Data, background, and policy statements on export agriculture. (http://www.fas.usda.gov/)

-- FAS World Food Summit Page: Extensive documentation of U.S. and administration positions on world food issues (http://www.fas.sda.gov/icd/summit/summit.html)

-- USDA/FAS Press Office: Alisa Harrison, (202) 720-4623 (http://ww.fas.usda.gov/scriptsw/PressRelease/pressrel_frm.asp) Maureen Quinn, (202) 720-7115, maureen.quinn@usda.gov.

USDA, Economic Research Service: A thorough, readable backgrounder on many aspects of U.S. food security, including a directory of relevant USDA experts. "Briefing Room: Food Security in the United States" (http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/foodsecurity/)

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR): This multinational group supports scientific research to improve agricultural productivity as well as protect the environment and biodiversity. It has both public and private members and operates through 16 "Harvest Centers" in some 100 countries. CGIAR Secretariat (housed at World Bank), (202) 473-8951 (http://www.cgiar.org/)

International Food Policy Research Institute: The U.S. affiliate of the CGIAR. Media contacts: Michael Rubinstein, (202) 862-5670, m.rubinstein@cgiar.org; Janet Hodur, (202) 862-8177, j.hodur@cgiar.org; Michele Pietrowski, (202) 862-5679, m.pietrowski@cgiar.org; (http://www.ifpri.org/ and http://www.ifpri.cgiar.org/index1.asp)

Population Reference Bureau: An established source of objective and authoritative information on population matters. Press contact: Ellen Carnevale, (202) 939-5407, ecarnevale@prb.org (http://www.prb.org). They have one of the very best collections of population-related links online (http://www.popnet.org/). "Population, Food, and Nutrition," Population Bulletin, Vol. 51, No. 4, February 1997, by William Bender and Margaret Smith (http://www.prb.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PRB/AboutPRB/Population_Bulletin2/Population,_Food,_and_Nutrition.htm)

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "Reforming Global Trade in Agriculture: A Developing-Country Perspective," by Shishir Priyadarshi (http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/TED_2.asp? from=pubdate)

World Resources Institute: An established and academically respected think tank on world resources issues, with a focus on sustainability. Press contact: Adlai Amor, (202) 729-7736, aamor@wri.org (http:// www.wri.org/)

PlanetWire: This is a free and ultracool electronic news service focused on population and environment. It includes backgrounders, a broad-based daily clip service (subscribable by e-mail), and much more. Press contact: Kathy Bonk or Cecilia Snyder, Communications Consortium Media Center (CCMC), (202) 326-8711, csnyder@ccmc.org (http://www.planetwire.org/)