FOOD: More to Come

Every day on the planet Earth there are 90,000 more mouths to feed. Every four months the equivalent of the population of Australia is added to the world. By the year 2000 twice as many people will crowd the globe. Even today nearly a third of the earth's population gets fewer calories than the amount at which British adults and children began to lose weight and working efficiency during the war. To feed the growing mass of humans at a level above subsistence, more than 70 square miles of land should be turned over to agriculture every day. But one-fifth of the earth's surface is too cold to produce crops, one-fifth too arid, one-fifth too mountainous, and one-tenth is bare rock. In Cardiff, Wales last week, at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, some 2,000 of the world's leading experts confronted these facts with a surprising optimism. One major fact: world food production—contrary to popular belief—is increasing at a slightly faster rate than world population. Furthermore of the 30% of the earth's surface potentially suitable for cultivation, they claimed, only some 10% is actually in use. Chief difficulty is that the most increased production is in the better developed countries where population is relatively stable. According to Sir Alexander Fleck, higher yields in the underdeveloped countries should come from more fertilizer and water rather than more tractors. Laborsaving equipment "may help to ease the peasant's burden," said Sir Alexander, "but we must beware of suddenly knocking it off his back or he will stumble and fall into unemployment." Greatly increased yields can be obtained by such simple devices as an improved plow, which could be drawn by a bullock, or by increased use of fertilizer. "Just as most people are starved for food, most crops are starved of essential elements—nitro gen, phosphorus and potassium." Though production of nitrogen fertilizer has now reached 10 million tons a year, it "still ranks as one of the most underexploited discoveries of all time." Concluded Britain's Physicist P.M.S. Blackett: "We as scientists and technologists, have already given ourselves the tools by means of which hunger could be banished from the world. It is now up to us as citizens of the world to make sure they are used."