Following on the food crisis post I made last week, here's an excellent article on the topic in The Economist called "The New Face of Hunger." (Suggest you read it quickly while the article is still free of charge.)
The Economist article is more optimistic than some of the projections I've been hearing, suggesting that the higher grain prices are already providing economic incentive for farmers to plant more crops. But it also says that we're not likely to see a dramatic increase in food production because R&D investment into new seed strains has lagged behind population growth in the last couple of decades, and it will take a few years for investment to catch up.
This is one area where the world can't afford to be complacent. The food crisis, the energy crisis and the environmental crisis all stem from one fact: there are already too many people in the world and the population continues to expand geometrically. And unfortunately no one seems to be talking seriously about population policy except maybe the Chinese government.
It's not a politically popular subject to bring up, (or even a fun one to talk about, I'm well aware). But it seems like we'll just be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic unless we start tackling the root causes of all these crises. The stakes are very high.
Posted by case at April 27, 2008 07:40 PM