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.
les johnson says:
March 27, 2011 at 3:53 am
As for your hunger pangs? Its because you have intestinal fauna used to food (and water) in France. I don’t feel hungry in the mid-west, but I am always hungry in France. (and not just because of the small portions).
Small portions?! You should go to Normandy…
I was in the States several times before and since – never had these hunger pangs I had in the Midwest. My brother, without being aware of my experience, went to the same place from England a couple of years back, quite unaware of my experience. He’s used to cotton wool bread etc., but made similar complaints about the “non-nourishing” food when he got back.
Anyway thanks for the link to the Monsanto boss: one bit of hearsay I won’t trot out again.
At Nature’s website there is a news item claiming that anthropogenic global warming started with the invention of agriculture 8,000 years ago.
The 8,000-year-old climate puzzle
Models bolster case for early human effect on greenhouse-gas levels.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110325/full/news.2011.184.html
That news item is based on an article in a journal called The Holocence. You can read an abstract at the link below.
Can natural or anthropogenic explanations of late-Holocene CO2 and CH4 increases be falsified?
http://hol.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/02/07/0959683610387172
Actually, it’s MUCH worse than that! The true threat from overcrowding is NOT massive famine, war, pestilence and death. It is a well proven fact that overcrowding in lab rats (and therefore people-everyone KNOWS that people are just like lab rats) causes them to become psychotic and suicidal, just like Lemmings.
This has been proven by the residents of Detroit, Chicago, Berkeley, CA and the entire state of New Jersey!
That proves it!
(The problem with the leftist agenda these days is that it is impossible to tell the agenda from sarcasm and irony. The above is a JOKE. Honest. And the idea that Lemmings become suicidal is a hoax perpetrated by Disney film producers/cameramen. Although…….some may be puzzled by the statistic that a certain cultural group in a high-density population environment has an abortion rate in excess of 50%. In Darwinian terms, that is not a survival characteristic.)
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Andy Jones:
Arithmetic was used back in the early 2000s to sell people on the benefits of compound interest. People would borrow money to invest because “you just can’t lose”.
These days, with 3% interest and 2% inflation, it seems to have fallen out of favor. Let’s see 70/(3-2) = a long time saving.
Point being nothing goes up at a rate of 5% forever.
If you want something to worry about – which seems to be the case – worry about unfunded pension liabilities and the compound interest of funding these into the future.
“you assume human knowledge and technology have no limits.”
It probably has some limit, however we are nowhere close to reaching it and probably won’t for thousands of years.
The problem with many people is they actually believe we are close to reaching limits on technology. That is why we hear things like the guy who claimed there would be no more patents back in 1897. Some people simply cannot visualize technology advances.
BM: Great name. So descriptive. Can’t wait to see the avatar.
Population control, it has been around for years! It is called Natural Selection!
Poor developing countries now and in the past, even the USA, familys had lots of children because of high infant mortalty rates, more children to make up for the ones that die. And as been said that as the developed countries get more wealth they decline in reproductivity of kids, better health means less need for more kids, it happened before and will again.
guidoLaMoto says:
March 27, 2011 at 5:15 am
Guido: You are mistaking two different types of curves. An exponential curve has a steeply rising (or falling) trace that continues on to infinity. A logarithmic curve starts out steeply rising (or falling) but eventually levels off . Malthus assumed population followed the exponential function rather than the logarithmic function.
dp says: March 26, 2011 at 11:42 pm
Fuel costs?
Transport costs?
Government interference through excise duties and taxes?
Wayne Richards says: March 27, 2011 at 2:55 am
Fortunately many entrepreneurial types moved on to metal and synthetics. More persons were served.
guidoLaMoto says: March 27, 2011 at 5:15 am
‘same sort of mistake Malthus made: you assume human knowledge and technology have no limits.’
Can’t see that this occurred with the global economy/trade in addictive substances.
Tx Willis, another interesting post. The wedding blog some weeks ago was entertaining. As were various links. Still catching up on some weeks reading.
Malthus also assumed that food production would increase only in a linear fashion. In actuality it has increased at a nearly exponential rate since the time of Thomas Malthus. I would suspect that it will, in the end, be more of a logarithmic rate.
Henry George in his “Progress and Poverty” (1879) and Julian Simon in his relatively recent “Ultimate Resource II” accurately explained the metrics behind how a growing world population has met its resource needs. I recommend both classics.
The trouble with predicting the future, is that the instant someone acts on that prediction they are changing the conditions which would have led to that future, thus invalidating the prediction. Conditional probability is funny that way.
An exponent is a log. We’re talking about unlimited, exponential growth vs modified growth- giving the classic sigmoid, or logistic, curve. No real system can show unlimited growth.
Les johnson, production may respond to prices, but prices have been up without an increase in supply the last couple of years:
http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/foodpricesindex/en/
guidoLaMoto, some animals behave like you describe with first an exponential growth that slows down to fairly steady state. Others grow past their sustainable limit leading to periodic population crashes. In extreme cases like the reindeers on St Mathew Island, the population may even go extinct. In a rapidly changing society like ours it’s impossible to tell in advance which group we belong to. That technology will solve all future problems is just a statement of faith.
Richard M, the story about the guy who thought there would be no more patents is an urban myth.
Food production, or lack of it, is heavily subsidized and controlled by governments. The amount of Oregon land once dedicated to wheat, barley, and oats, that now sit in CRP (cannot be used to grow anything) would astound you. Yes, we get paid to not grow anything. Sounds like a deal doesn’t it. But we also have price controls on what we do grow, meaning that more often than not, farmers are barely able to meet costs, let alone have a profit to live on.
If we were given the opportunity to sell wheat, barley, and oats at a price to cover both cost and profit without government interference, most folks would howl till their throat quit on them. Basic food prices would rise and fall, based on our costs and profit margin. Poor folks would have to be fed by government handouts far greater than they are, or left to starve to death when costs soar, such as they do when diesel fuel prices soar. But that is the conundrum we face if we leave the government out of our farming businesses.
Those squiggly lines you see in the graphs are likely far more affected by governmental controls than they are any other driver of per capita production.
For those interested in the basics of malnutrition …
This is serious stuff.
It looks like another promo for global bureaucratic control of production and distribution of food and they are attempting to use the claim of high temperatures reducing food production to cloak a population problem.
The question is when will the 7 billion people in the world become 14 billion and more? The population of the West is only growing because of immigration it stands to reason the growth in population has been in the third world.
There are limits to everything including food production. At what point does food production limit population growth and at what point does a nation with food allow their food supply to be distributed by an international agency rather than by the free market system?
We should take price of what we have achieved and do more but we should also keep in mind any group that can control the food supply will have the power to control everything.
Fred Hardwood said above,
Henry George in his “Progress and Poverty” (1879) and Julian Simon in his relatively recent “Ultimate Resource II” accurately explained the metrics behind how a growing world population has met its resource needs. I recommend both classics.
Progress and Poverty is available as a Kindle e-book for $4.95 and can be read using free Kindle software on a PC, Mac and most smart phones as well as a Kindle.
Ultimate Resource II is available on-line for free at the author’s site.
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
I love this internet-thing.
If people are going to insist on talking Malthus, it’s important to note that he proposed a falsifiable theory – that population growth is exponential, whilst food production grows geometrically – that has since been falsified in both parts. Population growth is not exponential, and food production increases are much faster than geometric, and have been for centuries.
All of Malthus’s work on what would happen if his basic hypothesis were true is good, logical thinking – but the basic hypothesis has been empirically proven wrong.
A few days ago I did a similar analysis of McKibben’s nonsense (looking at sea level and agricultural output).
See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_McKibben.htm
Becky, Willis has already responded to your critique, but as someone with a little experience in teaching the children of the ‘urban poor’, often those same urban poor are their own worst enemies when it comes to the matter of diet. As an example, in the last few years there has been a huge move toward teaching schoolkids in the UK about the benefits of preparing and eating healthy foods, initially popularised by the chef Jamie Oliver. But it ain’t easy; when some mothers in a town in the English Midlands became so worried about their kids eating the new school dinners (which are limited in fats, sugars and salt that the kids love); those mothers subverted the schools’ attempts to ensure their kids eat healthy stuff by handing hamburgers, fried fish and chips, chocolate, crisps and sugar-filled soft-drinks to their kids through the bars of the school’s fences!
It is very easy and reasonably cheap to eat very well in the UK; the big supermarket chains sell a huge array of excellent food products at a reasonable cost, but many of the poor can be seen filling supermarket trolleys with ‘cheap’ ready-prepared meals which tend to contain the maximum amounts of sugars, salt and fats, while the same urban poor ignore the ingredients for superb meals which are a far cheaper option but require basic knowledge and skills to prepare. The same Jamie Oliver took his crusade promoting healthy and low-cost foods to the USA; the overweight citizens of one town ensured that Jamie was barred from their schools!
Your argument based on ’empty calories’ opens up the question of the poor being empowered through knowledge to help themselves. Waving arms about ’empty calories’ avoids the very real problems stemming from ignorance underlying this issue.
Andy Jones says:
March 26, 2011 at 8:06 pm
“I would like to hear argument that endless growth in population can be endlessly provided for.”
This is a complete ‘straw-man’ statement. Humans, just like any other living thing in the biosphere, expand until the limit of available resources are reached. I think the real question should be “How will future technological developments effect world climax population?”. We need the equivalent of computings Moore’s Law, which shows as a rule of thumb that processing power doubles every 18 months.
This is the main reason why ‘peak oil’ or ‘peak coal’ or ‘peak’ anything never has the expected impact. As history shows, advances in technology simply makes the impact of these peaks on population irrelevant – fusion, thorium, methane clanthrides anyone???
Dave says:
March 26, 2011 at 9:22 pm
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.”
Dave and Andy, I think you would be interested to know that 90 bn people could get into Lake Superior and tread water, each with a square metre of space. Gives some perspective on the population issue doesn’t it?
Thomas: your
Les johnson, production may respond to prices, but prices have been up without an increase in supply the last couple of years:
Exactly as predicted by economic theory. Increased demand + constant or down supply = higher prices. In a year or two, you will see higher production, chasing the price increases.
Commodities like food and oil, are a 1 to 2 year lagging indicator.
Olen: your
The question is when will the 7 billion people in the world become 14 billion and more?
Answer: Never. Most population studies shows population peaking around 2050 at 9 to 10 billion, then slowly declining.