Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Bill McKibben, the skeptics best friend, can always be depended on to provide interesting claims. Never one to let a good crisis go to waste, he opines on the tsunami and our “shrinking margins” over at the Guardian. A number of people have highlighted various of his ideas, not all of them favorably. One claim of his that I have not seen discussed is the following:
We’re seeing record temperatures that depress harvests – the amount of grain per capita on the planet has been falling for years.
Figure 1. Food and Protein per capita. The LDCs are the “Least Developed Countries”, the poorest of the world’s countries. Red and orange are total food supply (right scale). Dark and light blue are protein (left scale). DATA SOURCE
Let’s start by considering the real issue. People eat a host of things, not just grains. So the issue is not the number of kilogrammes of grain produced per person. That’s only part of the story. The real issue is, how well are we feeding the ~ 7 billion people of the world?
The first thing that Figure 1 shows is that after years of making little gain, since the early 1990s the food supply in the LDCs has been improving (orange line). There’s still a ways to go, but the trend is upwards.
The next thing is quite surprising. In the year 2007 (the last year for which we have data), the people in the poorest countries (orange line) were getting almost as many daily calories as the global average in 1961 (red line). To me, this is an amazing accomplishment. Remember that during this time, the population of the planet more than doubled. Despite that, both the poorest of the poor, and the global population as a whole, are better fed than at any time in history.
Finally, globally there is no sign of any recent decrease in nutrition levels. Nor do nutrition levels appear to be connected in any way to the temperature.
However, to be fair, that wasn’t McKibben’s claim. He said that grain production per capita on the planet has been “falling for years”, so let’s check that. Figure 2 shows those numbers, with the data again from FAOSTAT.
Figure 2. Production per capita for all cereal grains. Figures for the LDCs represent domestic cereal production divided by domestic population.
Has global grain production per capita been “falling for years” as McKibben claims? The observations say no. Globally, it peaked at just above 350 kg per person around 1980 and has dipped less than 10% and come back up since then.
For the LDCs, on the other hand, their domestic cereal grain production was unable to keep up with their domestic population growth until the early 1990s. Since then, due in part to decreasing population growth rates, LDC grain production per capita has been rising steadily. There’s no sign of any recent change in that rising trend. Anything is possible tomorrow, of course. But there’s no sign of falling grain production as McKibben claims, from temperature or any other cause.
So, what’s the current score in the battle of the farmers of the planet to feed the ever-increasing masses?
Farmers: 1 … Malthus: 0.
Oh, and McKibben’s score? … -1 for truth content, but high marks for entertainment value.
w.
PS – The continued ability of the world to feed itself, despite adding a total of four billion people to the planet in the last fifty years, is an unparalleled and largely unrecognized success for humanity. I am so tired of people like McKibben not only not acknowledging that, but going so far as to claim that the trend has reversed and that things are getting worse. That’s nonsense. In terms of world nutrition, things are better than they have ever been, even for the poorest countries. Not only that, but they continue to improve. That’s a huge success.
So rather than incessant whining about how terrible things are, how about we take some pride in that success, and think about what it is we’ve done right to achieve that, and how to do more of whatever that was that got us here?
[UPDATE TWO WEEKS LATER] Here’s the latest of Bill McKibben’s “depressed harvests”, from the WSJ … India has so much grain from several years of record harvests that it has run out of warehouse space to store it.
India Foodgrain Output to Hit Record High
By BANIKINKAR PATTANAYAK
NEW DELHI –India’s foodgrains output is set to rise to a record 235.88 million metric tons this crop year, according to government estimates, a figure which is likely to pave the way to lifting the export ban on wheat and common rice varieties.
Citing the government’s latest crop estimates, Farm Minister Sharad Pawar said wheat output during the year through June is likely to rise to 84.27 million tons from 80.8 million tons last year, while rice output will increase to 94.11 million tons from 89.09 million tons over the same period.
“The government should now give serious thought about storage, allocation to states and export of rice and wheat,” Mr. Pawar told a news conference.
India imposed a ban on the export of wheat and common grades of rice three years ago to curb prices, and since then the government’s grain stocks have swelled to more than double its requirement.
Consequently, state-run warehouses ran out of space last year and the government was forced to store some of the grain in the open. The storage crunch may worsen this year because of the record output. The government is expected to make a decision next month on lifting the export ban on wheat and common rice grades.
Andy Jones>
If I understand your point correctly, it’s that at some point there is a maximum limit to the population the planet can support, and I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. I can’t speak for the others, but personally I don’t worry about that point arriving for a couple of reasons. In the first place, it’s a very long way off, if at all. We could have a population of a trillion at least, if we were willing to make that a priority. Well before the point food becomes an issue, space and personal liberty becomes a bigger issue, I suspect. That neatly brings in the second point, which is that there doesn’t seem to be too much reason to think the world population will keep growing indefinitely. As countries get richer, their populations increase slower, and even start to decrease in some cases. We’re not nearly done yet in global terms, but there is an upper bound eventually.
Hugh Pepper says:
March 26, 2011 at 7:21 pm
As cited in the head post, it’s the FAOSTAT database. Fabulous resource.
I would give you my frank and honest opinion of Lester Brown, but I fear this is a family blog. Suffice it to say that if he claimed it is 2011, I’d double-check my calendar.
RUN THE NUMBERS YOURSELF! DO NOT BELIEVE ANYONE! NOT EVEN ME! But particularly don’t believe Lester.
Five minutes on the FAOSTAT website gives me this:
As you can see, the situation is much more complex than, and nothing like, what Lester claims.
In addition, he’s cherry-picking. Often, countries will move from producing one crop to producing another for a variety of reasons. For example, take Jordan. Yes, cereal grains are down, as you point out … but other agricultural production is way, way up. Cereal grains were always a minor crop there, look at the tonnages. A look at the FAO data shows that in 1970 Jordan produced about 0.4 million tonnes of total crops. In 2009, total crops were 5 times that, about 2 million tonnes. Makes the claims of the huge water shortage ring hollow. Yes, water is short there, but it hasn’t stopped Jordan from quintupling production in a quarter century. And with the Jordanian total crop production still increasing, with no sign of a slowdown, Lester’s claim of a Jordanian downturn is just just more of his usual “brown matter” …
And yes, Israel imports 98% of its wheat … no surprise. Countries produce what they are best fitted for, and trade for the rest. Last I looked, Israel wasn’t exactly set up for the whole “amber waves of grain” deal …
w.
Andy Jones says:
March 26, 2011 at 8:06 pm
I’d like to hear that somebody was actually making that argument. I certainly wasn’t, it’s not a meaningful claim in my book.
I do think that we can easily feed nine billion people, that’s only about a 30% increase in population. I also think that we have only begun to scratch the possible energy sources. As a result, any bounds on anything are premature. We’re not near any of those limits at this point, as I think you’d agree.
w.
Hey Willis,
“Countries produce what they are best fitted for, and trade for the rest.”
Worth noting that alone is a major factor in increasing global food production. A few centuries ago, Israel would have been using up too much land (and effort) on basic food production for which it was unsuited to be able to put much to use growing the crops which suit the conditions – and couldn’t have done much with the surplus in any case.
Got me wondering: if it was dedicated entirely to growing grain, could the American Mid-west produce enough grain? Or the Russian prairies? How much area would it take, in the best grain country in the world, with the best methods? I wouldn’t know where to start looking.
In that McKibben article, he also wrote the following:
“We might not have constant access to unlimited power at every second of every day.
I think it’s clear that the future these greens envision for us is one where we have far less technology and modern conveniences/appliances to use, where we share our wealth, tech, and tech know-how with the rest of the developing and emerging world, where a carbon card will dictate our lives, where a global government will ration the world’s resources (and hence control the world’s economies), in short, a ‘common’ integrated socialist egalitarian utopia.
Seems like they’ve wanted this for decades. How convenient that they are using AGW (with it’s bullet-proof science) to get us there.
Thank you for that. I really don’t have any idea where the limits lie (we’re going to find out either way I suspect). There could be a case to be made that even ‘steady state’ is ultimately unsustainable on current principles but thank you again.
What’s the title of your book please? (sorry if I kissed it)
Boll***s, sh**……….’Missed’ meant MISSED……….
Sorry I didn’t keep using a pseudonym now!!
Andy Jones says:
March 26, 2011 at 8:43 pm
Actually I do say it’s a fact. Infinite growth over infinite time is not possible.
==================================================
Andy, you forgot the other infinite in the equation. Man’s ability to overcome his situation is of infinite possibilities. What are they? I’ve no idea. What I do know, is that there is no limit to what technology will bring us. I know you have already disregarded that argument, but you should revisit it. What people fail to understand, is that energy is the ultimate recyclable. While it is true, we can’t create it, the converse is also true, we can’t destroy it. We can only use it, and use it again. Our food is simply an expression of energy and matter. Consider it like water. In spite of the doom and gloom we’ve seen here considering water, it too, is one of the ultimate recyclables. People, water doesn’t go anywhere. We drink it, or water our plants, plants use it. We expel it. It evaporates and comes down again. Does it move around? Sure it does. We’ve plenty of evidence of old river beds etc….. that it isn’t in the same place it was isn’t a surprise. About the only thing that would subtract usable water from the budget would be an ice age(sequester). We’re just going to have to do what we’ve always done, adapt.
The difficulty arises when we consider the future by what we know today. Its wrong to do that. It is never correct. We don’t know how things will be, we never do. Although I do find Orwell and Douglas MacArthur to have been quite the prognosticators. (1984 and Thayer award acceptance speech respectively)
We don’t know the mode of transportation, the fuel used, our habitat, clothing necessary, nothing, we don’t know any of this stuff. I guess, Michael Crichton said it better than anyone when he gave a lecture at Cal-Tech.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-warming-a-caltech-lecture-by-michael-crichton/
The two speeches and the book are always worth a read.
And finally, if all that wasn’t enough, you should know that once the LDC’s become developed, it is expected that the world population would level out anyway, making this simply an academic discussion. We already see cultures losing population as opposed to gaining. World population overgrowth is a myth perpetuated by misanthropists. I mean, really? In this day and age, the procreation compulsion would be so great that all throughout the globe we’d forget how to use a condom? If we ever got to that point, mankind would do what he always does. Adapt.
Becky says:
March 26, 2011 at 8:12 pm
Becky, while those are interesting claims, you’ll have to provide some citations. First, I would be shocked if the poor people of the planet got a significant proportion of their calories from “genetically engineered cereal grains”. Citation?
Second, I would be surprised if any studies showed that genetically engineered grains were less nutritious than regular grains. In fact, some corn is genetically engineered to be more nutritious, because it has missing proteins that allow greater use of the other proteins. Again … citation?
Certainly, one can be over-fed and still malnourished. Compared to under-fed and malnourished, however, I know which one I’d pick …
Yeah, that soy and corn and wheat, they’re obviously the wrong thing to feed people … say what?
Here’s the thing. Most of the farmers adopting GM seeds are small farmers in the developing world. Why? Most GM varieties are chosen for one reason only – resistance to insects/molds/disease. The poor farmers don’t have to use anywhere near as much pesticides with the GM crops.
Now, you might think that poor farmers using less pesticide is a bad thing. Me, I don’t, and neither do the farmers.
Yeah, yeah, I know you think it’s just empty calories … but until you can provide a citation, I’m gonna say nope. Same calories as always.
w.
Willis
Thank you so much. I am going to use your charts if I may. Thank you.
I am giving a talk to a generally warmist crowd in a few weeks. “Food production” was on my list of main items to address.
FAOSTAT is handy. I used it last winter for info needed for an export development project I was working on.
The main message here is simple: food production does not seem to be crashing as many would have us imagine.
Thanks and regards.
Clive
Sillly man Willis!
Becky, Andy, Hugh and Bowel will just move on until they find some other scare. No amount of rational explanation will persuade them otherwise. No amount of “the Malthusians have always been wrong” will work either.
They want to believe we are doomed and will scratch around until they find something to hang their worries on. The correct response to their endless pleas for the next bad thing is to accept their psychological concerns and direct them to counselling.
Water supply is, of course, the latest worrywart catchcry. Because data on it is too hard to collect, so rational argument is in short supply. Never mind that water literally falls from the sky and is most of the planet, lack of it is going to doom us all!!!11!!eleventy!!
You have to admire the Malthusians though in their persistence in spite of repeated defeat. Even the Jehovah’s Witnesses eventually gave up saying the end was nigh when their predictions failed too often.
It’s a shame that the “Club of Rome” is only a metaphorical stick with which to beat them.
I’ll mention that as farming becomes more capital intensive (technologically advanced) it also can become more efficient. Even with hay, vast improvements in its nutritive value are made by simply managing the temperature and moisture content. Last year my office even looked at a computer controls job for very expensive German hay dryers that are getting popular with local farmers. All aspects of agriculture constantly make improvements.
For example, there a nice chart of Indiana’s corn yield in bushels per acre here. It rises steadily from about 25 bushels per acre in 1930 to around 150 bushels per acre now. I mention this because someone cited decreased acreage. Well if the yield per acre goes up six-fold and the market is relatively fixed, farmers would only bother planting a sixth as many acres.
Andy Jones says: March 26, 2011 at 8:40 pm
So Willis, what is the end-point?.
=============================
Andy,
I think you would find the following book highly edifying: “Human consequences of crowding” edited by Mehmet R. Gürkaynak and W. Ayhan LeCompte (1979), New York: Plenum Press. It is based on Selected lectures presented at the Symposium on Human Consequences of Crowding, held in Antalya, Turkey, Nov. 6-11, 1977.
I was there presenting a paper and vividly recall several findings that were true then and more likely to be true now. Here is what I learned:
1. In 1977, the amount of arable land rich enough to support agriculture was capable of supporting a population of 40 Billion people well given the 1970 level of food production.
2. If all of the people in the world were given four square meters of ground to stand on, the total population would occupy a land area just larger than the city of Gainesville, Florida.
3. Since the beginning of recorded history, the population has been increasing, but the population density has been decreasing (fewer people per hectare).
4. The population increase throughout most of history has been exponential, but it was leveling off in 1977, and was expected to peak in 2050 at about 2050 at 10 Billion if current trends (in 1997) of increasing nutrition in the developing world and declining birthrates in the developed world continued. It was assumed in 1997 that as developing nations became more prosperous, their birthrates would also decline (which has in fact occurred).
So while it is possible to conjecture that population will increase indefinitely and that food supply will not keep pace, the facts are that such is not the case in the real world.
“I would like to hear argument that endless growth in population can be endlessly provided for”
Look at the rich countries of the world. Except for immigration from the poor countries, their populations are flat or declining.
Population solves itself when people don’t need to have 10 children to provide manual labour to tend the crops and livestock and as security into old age.
Willis, thank you for responding as always. Would you care to speculate; if in the next calandar year CO2 was to magically reduce to 280 PPM, how much less food would we grow, all else being the same?
I do think there is a kind of death -wish mentality in the thinking of the socialist/pessimists. Part of the reason people like Elrich and co. believe in such dire futures is because of the other self-fulfilling ideologies they believe; if many of these were indeed implemented, things might well get dire. And because they refuse to address/modify these other ideologies, its no wonder they balso elieve in other indirectly related doomsday/negative scenarios or trends.
Eg if we abandon all fossil fuels, like the doomsdayers want us to, then yes, people might well start to starve. The outcome of one is predicated on the ideology of the other.
Its a kind of self-fulfilling mentality. Stalin had it, Mao had it, Hitler had it. If you look hard enough for traitors/end of the world/enemies of the state etc, you will eventually find them, even if you have to make them confess/create/fulfil things they haven’t done, or wouldn’t have done otherwise.
I thought of another self-fulfilling, ideology- related prediction recently, (which explains my point well) whilst travelling through poor 3rd world countries. The old idea that rubbish will eventually make the planet uninhabitable, (one of the stupidist of the doomsday trends, as in the movie Wall-E). Rubbish clogging up living spaces is exclusively a 3rd world problem, because they can’t afford to pay for council workers etc to clean it up. It has nothing to do with lack of space, and everything to do with poverty. So how does this fit into the ideology of socialist doomsday prediction?. Well, if you actually implement various extreme socialist policies, it makes societies poorer, and rubbish will then, inevitably, pile up as a result. A self -fulfilling doomsday ideology if I ever heard of one.
So the next time you hear someone worry about where to put all the rubbish that is going to drown us, inform them its only a problem if we implement stupid poverty -creating policies to begin with.
I always thought it was amazing in Australia over the last few years that the givernment would go on about the drought and water restrictions whilst at te same time the Grape growers were recording record crops that led to a massive glut in grapes. Wine is now very very cheap here because of that.
Lunatics or LuddiTicks?
Willis, this was a very nice post as always, thank you!
I’d posit that some of the reduction in global grain output is related to loss of productivity due to armed conflict, political upheaval and other such human causes. Zimbabwe was “the breadbasket of Africa,” but their agricultural output is in shambles due to political tinkering by Mugabe. I think we’d find similar drops in Iraq and other countries.
http://people.oregonstate.edu/~muirp/agtrends.htm
People produce more wealth then they consume. Governments consume without production. When bureaucrats break the backs of producers everyone starves.
More energy allows fewer hands to create more wealth and food. I have created food and wealth for over 60 years. Numbers of people is not a problem. The increase in rule makers and tax collectors is the problem. pg
To get bigger crops to feed more people we need more carbondioxide, which is the food for plants and trees.
the problem is: Bill McKibben & company is still convinced that more carbon dioxide causes warming, which, if true, indirectly perhaps could have an adverse effect on crops.
So we have to simply convince him (and many others) that carbondioxide does not cause any warming.
Most of the increase in carbondioxide occurred in the past 4 decades. Many good temp. records are available from weather stations during this period.
I determined that in the pace where I live there has been no warming as a result of more GHG’s. See here:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/assessment-of-global-warming-and-global-warming-caused-by-greenhouse-forcings-in-pretoria-south-africa
Namely, if warming is as a result of GHG’s you would expect heat entrapment and subsequently you would expect minimum temps. to rise at a rate faster than – or at least equivalent to – those of the mean and maximum temps. What I found is exactly the opposite: minimum temps. have been declining where as maxima have been rising. However, means have essentially stayed the same. So heat content must have stayed the same.
I double checked these results with results from Spain, Northern Ireland and during the dry months in La Paz Bolivia and found similar results. You can do the same in your area if you follow the same procedure as shown here:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/assessment-of-global-warming-and-global-warming-caused-by-greenhouse-forcings-in-pretoria-south-africa
So I say more carbon dioxide is good.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Things that matter:
Planted acreage – up or down?
Yield – up or down?
Silo capacity – up or down?
Seed crop capacity – up or down?
Silage – up or down?
Irrigation acreage – up or down?
Urbanization of agrarian populations – up or down?
Demand – up or down?
Supply vs demand – balance?
Nothing in this report even goes near describing helpful metrics.
Bowel movement said, “It is a reality that there is no replacement for this and a time will absolutely arrive where the petro-chemical industry will simply not be able to keep up”
Only because of government’s refusal to allow us to drill.
Bowel movement says:
…the petro-chemical industry will simply not be able to keep up
———————-
The potash reserves in Saskatchewan are massive. By conservative estimates, Saskatchewan could supply world demand at current levels for several hundred years.
http://www.ir.gov.sk.ca/Default.aspx?DN=3558%2C3541%2C3538%2C3385%2C2936%2CDocuments