“The human population is growing - towards ---.” Julian says.
Of course it grows - tell us something new. As Charles Fenner noted in September 1937 – “If lands are productive, population increases, and the pressure becomes as great as ever. Why should we fill up the earth with struggling people.”
As L.T.Evans outlines in his Feeding the Ten Billion, Homo sapiens numbers grew to about 5 million by 8,000 BC. Then the land became more productive with the development of agriculture, and population rose tenfold by 2000 BC. Agriculture and innovation continued to improve, so we were half a billion by 1500. Further improvements brought us to our first billion at about 1825.
Access to cheap fossil energy since that time has multiplied the vast range of innovations which increased productivity of the land. And what happened? By 1927 our second billion; 1960, our third, 1975 the fourth, 1986 the fifth, by 1989 the sixth billion.
Julian Cribb writes as if we need more agricultural productivity to keep the population ball rolling.
We could on the other hand acknowledge the fundamental need to take action to limit population increase in order to allow agricultural improvements to achieve the success they deserve

Colinsett makes a very good point that human population expands to the limits of food availability - so that increasing food availability is not a long term solution to the population crisis.

Julian makes only a tangential mention of the critical role of oil in the green revolution (by referring to rising fuel prices). In fact the green revolution is almost completely dependent upon abundant oil supplies and, as these decrease, the green revolution will fail. The challenge in the future is not to double agricultural production but to maintain it anwhere close to current levels.

It is true that there are huge inefficiencies in food consumption currently and that, if we did not eat meat, we would have much greater food availability. However, inefficiencies are an essential buffer against variability in supply and any society that seeks to survive on maximally efficient consumption is condemning itself to collapse when its food supply becomes temporally reduced (e.g. by drought). A maximally efficient consumer has no reserve capacity!

We need a population control and urban agriculture revolution combined with local recycling of all human waste and more human labour inputs to cope with decreased fuel and fertilizer availability (phosphate production looks set to crash soon and urea is produced from natural gas).

Colin -

Just like you and I going on about population, Professor Cribb writes essentially the same article every couple months. When I read the comments, though, nobody ever says "No, you're wrong, Julian. There is plenty of food and there is nothing to worry about," but at the same time, nobody is really worried about it.

What is it about us that makes us say, "I'm not sure how, but it will all work out in the end. Nothing will be that bad."

I can sort of understand people being confused about fossil fuel depletion, sustainability, loss of biodiversity and many other environmental subjects. If you are a little unsure you don't get passionate.

But with food it doesn't seem that confusing. On current trends we will need twice as much food in 40 years. We don't have twice as much land, we don't have anything close to twice as much water and there is no way we can sustainably use twice as much fertiliser. I've never heard anybody dispute this general theme.

Why doesn't anybody think this is a problem? Is it because we are rich and we will have enough to eat even if we have to pay more? That is insensitive but okay for survival until hungry people get a little angry and do desperate things. Is it because a miracle like some new GM foods will be invented? Little improvements I can see but not big ones, like we need.

Ideas?

I notice that the list of goals for the coming decade does not include limiting the quantity of grain being converted to biofuels.
Grain biofuels are an immoral, uneconomic, enviromentally unsound and unnecessary industry. By omission,the author is advocating increasing the demands of our food production by converting grain to ethanol/biodiesel. Perhaps he can tell me why.

We are indeed plunging, eyes wide open into a population and ecological crisis. Preferring nature's way of starvation and "tooth and claw" competition to civilisation is just that: following our animal nature.
Lets learn another lesson from nature: only a fraction of a fraction ever survive extinction events, whether they be dino-killer asteroids, the Deccan traps plunging Earth into a volcanic hell or human insanity. The result will be a big life reset followed by millions of years of evolutionary "catch up".
If a human fraction is/was ever to survive Earth (this is a secular Sci-fi idea) it needs to take on a moral, almost religious meaning to a significant, powerful minority. Powerful enough to start seriously thinking about treating our planet as a cradle and not a God given garden of Eden. Some are doing this right now, but not our "leaders", they are maximising Growth and Profits at the behest of their masters.
Terry Pratchett had it right: We need to start thinking how to leave soon, or we never will. If there is *any* faith worth having (IMHO) it is this: we are worth saving, and the universe will thank us for not having to start with worms again. Space may be expensive, but it beats extinction! (BTW. Space technology is our best hope, even if we don't use it in space for a while.)

*Grain biofuels are an immoral, uneconomic,*

Goeff, we will have to agree to disagree on that one. Crops
are a form of energy, competing in the energy marketplace. Right
now it is just about profitable for me, to produce canola oil to
power my vehicles and use the residues as livestock feed.

Agriculture competes in the marketplace for inputs, be they
petroleum to power vehicles, fertilisers for crops etc. etc.
It is unrealistic to expect producers to pay ever higher prices
for these inputs, yet deny them the right to sell their crops
into that same market. Result will simply be less crop production.

Quite frankly if somebody chooses to have 11 kids which they cannot
feed, perhaps its time that they faced reality and had their tubes
tied after two.

I am all for providing family planning for the third world etc,
but people do need to take some responsibilities for their actions,
in places like sub Saharan Africa. So we have an extra 80 million
mouths a year to feed.

They know very well, that they only need to dangle a starving baby
before Western tv cameras and lo and behold, over the horizon come
boatloads of Western food aid. Our present methods are simply not
dealing with the problem itself

Jullian If we consume more than we produce, then wat are we eating.
I think wat we are tackling here is a dose of verbal diahorea.
How long is a comment? Some people here are frustrated would be polatitions. You go on and on and say nothing. They write essays,when the rules say comments. It is a hard do; when there are so many against your every move in agriculture. There are farms this year just growing enough for the upkeep of stock and personal use. You cannot grow without water.

Maybe we should recycle dead people into biscuits. What intrigues me is why this guy gives ten points to explain the food shortage when he need only have mentioned one: Population. An excellent article though. If only governments would take scientific research as seriously as advertising.

Yabby,
The grain biofuel industry around the world is being subsidised, protected, mandated by governments. It is very doubtful if grain ethanol it can compete in its own right against sugar cane ethanol.
So when you say a farmer has a right to sell to the highest bidder it is not a OK if the highest bidder is only there because of government subsidies.

Would you be happy with the grain biofuel issue if, for example, governments withdrew their support and the conversion of grain to ethanol had to compete with sugar cane ethanol and food on an equal footing?

Goeff I think they should all compete. If cane ethanol is cheaper,
so make the stuff.

AFAIK some of the mandates were put in place, as oil companies clearly
preferred to flog their petroleum products, rather then bio fuels.

Yes, subisidies distort markets, but the 50c a gallon on ethanol is
perhaps less distorting then the subsidies thrown at grain production
for years by the US/EU. Result is that alot of third world food
is not being produced where it is consumed. In places like Afghanistan,
they used to grow their own wheat. Low American grain
prices, subisised by taxpayers, also massively reduced corn
production in places like Mexico.

My point is that in the end, you can't mandate that land not be
used for energy production and I certainly don't think its
immoral to do so.

Food, energy, population are all related and are all on an exponential growth path. To solve any of these problems we have to change the system that humans have created that has lead to exponential consumption.

It turns out there is a solution to the problem that will lead to ever increasing standards of living. The solution is to make a minor change to the human invented money system that has lead to the consumption society. The money system is on an exponential growth path and we need to turn it on its head so that instead of growth - which is defined by the system as consumption - we turn it into a system where we have exponential value creation. We reward people by doing the same things with less in contrast to the current system where we reward people by giving them the ability to consume more. In the new world the less you use to do the same thing the richer you grow.

It is remarkably simple to do. We start to dismantle the interest based money system so that money stops growing exponentially which inevitably turn leads to more and more consumption. We can do this by paying people to consume less and by spending the money we give them on ways to get more value from lower consumption. We now have a system that has an exponential bias towards efficiency and value creation.

To see how to "fix" the energy problem by using these principles take a look at http://cscoxk.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/energy-rewards-to-reduce-emissions/

The same principles - but with variations - can be applied to water, to population, to food, to health, to education etc.