Billion people face famine by mid-century, says top US scientist

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5962238.ece

March 23, 2009

Billion people face famine by mid-century, says top US scientist

Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter

Famines affecting a billion people will threaten global food security during the 21st century, according to a leading US scientist.

Nina Fedoroff, the US State Department chief scientist, is convinced that food shortages will be the biggest challenge facing the world as temperatures and population levels rise. Food security in the coming years, she said, is “a huge problem” that has been met with little more than complacency. “We are asleep at the switch,” she said.

Her warning echoes comments by John Beddington, Britain’s chief scientist, last week in which he forecast a “perfect storm” of food, water and energy shortages by 2030.

Dr Fedoroff, who advises Hillary Clinton, said famines that strike a billion people are quite possible in a world where climate change has damaged food production and the human population has risen to nine billion.

…

[thereismore]

1. Sounds optimistic. nt

[tom_paine]

2. Future Headline: Who could have foreseen it would be faster than expected?

:rofl:

[soothsayer]

3. famine is political, not based on being able to produce food

It's the distribution of food that goes awry.

[NickB79]

5. In the past this was often true. We're entering new territory now.

Global climate change throws a whole new variable into the equation. If rainfall patterns are disrupted and summer temperatures increase, the ability to produce food may very well be in doubt over large areas of formerly arable land.

[zipplewrath]

4. These predictions have come around before

There will almost assuredly be famines in the future. But we (the global we) are currently taking huge amounts of land out of production (of food). Also, we currently have lousy efficiencies (too much emphasis on meat production for example, including land for feed corn). These famines may be as driven by economics as anything else (much like the Irish famine was). The capacity to produce food will be there, but not the economic capacity to produce or deliver it. Actually, the bigger concern has to do with water. Much of the ocean has been over harvested, and contaminated to the point of taking it "out of production". And sea food feeds huge portions of the world. Add to that over consumption of fresh water supplies and we have the prospect of hard pressure on balancing our food production against other competing needs of housing and general production. And in that kind of environment is also the potential for large scale epidemics.

[tama]

6. He's an optimist

human population hitting 9 billion in 2050 is quite distant likelihood, famine, pestilence and war will take their toll long before that and in 2050 there might by lot fewer humans than today.

I'm not saying it needs to be that way, that Mother Earth could not support our swollen numbers if we behaved modestly and prudently. But the likelihood that we'll suddenly learn to behave is not very promising.