Cheryl, have you noted the comments about the graph you posted by no less than six respondents – Bugsy, Yabby, Rhian, Candide, Divergence and um, Ludwig?

As it concerns global food security, your point about declining fertility is not only very simplistic, but highly misleading.

So, what about the questions I asked of you yesterday: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=14230#245677

Too difficult?

I note that the respondent closest to you on this thread, Rhian, said:

<< I’d cheerfully support assistance with voluntary family planning in developing countries to help people gain control of their lives and their fertility, >>

YES! THIS is what we need to do a whole lot more effectively. Not coercive measures. And certainly not a do-nothing approach to bringing the fertility rate down faster.

Yes we need to work hard on improving food production, but with a little more concern for environmental factors than Tim Andrews seems to demonstrate. And we need to put about the same amount of effort into stabilising the global population and then sending it into gentle long-term decline.

Something like a 50/50 effort into food production and population issues.

Rhian,

The benefits of the Green Revolution were enormous, and it is true that agricultural production is still rising, but the rate of increase of grain production has been falling and is currently below the rate of global population growth.

http://www.peopleandplanet.net/?lid=26107&section=34&topic=44

"The graph shows that while grain yields per acre have been increasing, the rate of increase has been slowing since the days of the Green Revolution in the 1970s. Most of the benefits of irrigation, machinery, fertilizer and plant breeding have already been realized."

It is hard to believe in "weak demand" when the World Food Price Index I linked to earlier is so high. In any case, your FAO source says, "In developing countries demand for cereals has grown faster than production." They also expect growth in global demand to pick up to around 1.4% a year by 2015.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/y3557e/y3557e08.htm

You keep chanting the mantra that we are always wrong, but every time I point to a society that really did collapse because of overpopulation or environmental problems, you deny its relevance to us, as well as ignoring all of the current environmental warning signs, such as the depletion of aquifers under India's wheat belt.

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/node/6267

A "classic tragedy of the commons" according to an article in the Economist.

http://www.economist.com/node/17199914

Divergence

I don’t deny there are problems in parts of India. If groundwater is being over-exploited it should be properly priced, or at least regulated. Your first article points to rice being an inappropriate crop for the Punjab. But looking at the country as a whole, things are far better than before the green revolution.

The Economist article identifies the issue as a “tragedy of the commons” – a form of market failure - and I would completely agree. The problem is not technology, it is property rights, as the article makes clear. If people don’t pay the true cost of a resource, or appear to get it “free”, they will over-exploit it - whether it be groundwater, fisheries, or “the commons”.

The FAO website shows that per capita food production rose by 41% between 1961 and 2010, and reached an all-time high in 2010. Total world food production has risen faster than grains production. This suggests that relative demand has shifted, and the FAO article gives a perfectly reasonable account of why this is so. The FAO data also show clearly that there has been a shift in land under cultivation away from cereals and towards oil crops.

So the data you cite do not support your interpretation that comparatively slow growth in cereals is a harbinger of the end of technological progress in agriculture. Nor are India’s water problems.

Further to my last post:

Something like a 50/50 effort into food production and population issues is what we really need.

Although a 90/10 approach would be a vast improvement on the current situation of essentially blind-eyeing the global population issue!

Crikey Pericles, I’ve just been reflecting on how totally wrong you are this time. Population, its size and rate of growth, and all the nuances therein on the different continents and in different countries around the world, and with all the political, social and religious connotations, is of absolutely critical importance in the struggle to achieve food security.

Crikey, Ludwig.

>>Crikey Pericles, I’ve just been reflecting on how totally wrong you are this time.<<

As opposed to all the other times, of course.

But seriously...

>>Population, its size and rate of growth, and all the nuances therein on the different continents and in different countries around the world, and with all the political, social and religious connotations, is of absolutely critical importance in the struggle to achieve food security.<<

You have stated your views on this topic on many, many occasions. However, the intent of the article, as I read it, was not to cover every aspect of food security, but to highlight examples of despicable interference by Greenpeace, designed to prevent or derail scientific advances that will increase food production.

If you care to argue that their activity in this area is beneficial, due to the fact that it will in itself prevent the growth of population through facilitating even more widespread famine, that would be germane and on-topic.

However, I stand by my initial observation that, once again, you have hijacked a perfectly reasonable discussion to suit your own population-control agenda.

*you have hijacked a perfectly reasonable discussion to suit your own population-control agenda.*

The thing is Pericles, they are two sides of the same coin. We
have heard it for decades now, how we need to grow more food for
the starving babies. Then we need even more food, for their starving
babies. Well what about giving women the choice of having all those
babies? Right now, hundreds of millions do not have that choice and
that is where the starving babies hang out.

Darwin accurately noted that a species will keep breeding ever larger
numbers, until the resources run out and it eventually crashes.
Well all we are doing right now, is wiping out other species for ever
more growth of our own. Its a Ponzi scheme, it really is.

So the issue is now a political one. Policitians won't touch family
planning in the third world, as they don't want to upset the Catholic
Church. The only way we can bring about change is people power and
that means raising the issue whenever possible. Slowly its actually
working. When a well known writer of ever increasing agricultural output wrote a similar article on a farming website, every single
poster replied that family planning need to finally be considered too. Well for me that is all good news, as both sides of the coin
need to be debated, not just the one.