Earth has had it

WASHINGTON — The earth just cannot take it any more.

It is a warning that environmentalists and others have been sounding for years. Now Mr Lester Brown of World-watch has said he has the proof.

Slowed growth in world food sup-piles provided real evidence that the planet’s biological limits might have been reached, he said in releasing his annual State Of The World report this weekend.

Among the signs: a three-month doubling of world rice prices, millions of hectares of rangeland chewed down to uselessness, spreading water shortages and a blue fin tuna can cost US$80,000 (S$128,000).

Worldwatch, in its 11th annual look at world environmental and social conditions, said: "As a result of our population size, consumption patterns and technology choices, we have surpassed the planet’s carrying capacity."

It said the growing pressure on world food resources pointed to hungry times ahead, as Third World populations continued to explode.

For more than two decades, scientists have been saying that the world can produce enough food to feed all of its inhabitants, that hunger problems can be solved by increasing yields and improving distribution.

But Worldwatch’s report said family planners, not farmers or scientists, held the key to future food supplies.

Mr Brown said, in an interview, that his staff of economists and social scientists had been noticing the trends for a few years now, but the critical picture only came into focus with this year’s research and analysis.

Worldwatch, whose report is being published in 27 languages, is a private, non-profit research group.

Mr Brown said that without radical scientific breakthroughs, large increases in crop yields that have allowed production to keep up with 40 years of rising consumption was unlikely to be possible.

He said in the report, which includes chapters written by a dozen Worldwatch researchers: "Human demands are approaching the limits of oceanic fisheries to supply fish, of rangelands to support livestock and, many countries, of the hydrological cycle to produce fresh water."

The report notes that from 1950 to 1984, world grain production grew 260 per cent, raising per capita production by 40 per cent. Over the same period, the world’s waterways yielded so much fish that the seafood catch per person doubled.

"But in recent years these trends in food output per person have been reversed with unanticipated abruptness," it said.

While some of the limits may be good news for agriculture and the fishing industries, which can expect higher prices, they are bad news for the millions of people facing starvation and malnutrition.

Population is projected to increase at the rate of 90 million people a year, 96 per cent of them in poorer countries.

The report said the only hope lay in family-planning education so that women could take advantage of it, and a continued search for new ways to produce food.

People in affluent countries should reduce consumption of fat-rich livestock products, freeing up grain for the world’s poor, it said.

It said the United States consumed 800 kg of grain per person each year, while India used only 200 kg.

It said a good model for the world might be Italy, where average consumption was 400 kg and life expectancy was higher than in either the US or India. — AP.

Source : The Sunday Times, January 16, 1994

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