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No World Food Shortage in the Offing
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14712 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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11 / 1988 |
1,825 Words |
| Author
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John R. Block
John R. Block is president of the National-American Wholesale
Grocers' Association and a former U.S. secretary of
agriculture. |
It seems that doomsday talk is always in fashion. In the 1970s, Paul Ehrlich preached population Armageddon and Barry Commoner postulated environmental death. Despite dire predictions of a starving world and a dying ecosystem, the human race has somehow survived.
Such rumors of calamity did serve the purpose of sensitizing public opinion to issues that need attention. As a result, the environment is cleaner and a massive cleanup is under way. But some current doom-and-gloomers are predicting imminent world food shortages and mass starvation just around the corner, and the facts do not support their arguments. The current focus on this alleged issue serves no real purpose. Individuals such as World Watch's Lester Brown are way off the mark when they suggest that we are on the slippery slope to world hunger.
A sober analysis shows that world food production potential has not diminished. The current drop in production resulted from 50 million U.S. acres being idle although set aside and another 25 million idled due to the highly praised Conservation Reserve Program. Those factors plus the 1988 drought contributed to reduced production.
Even with the drought, analysts do not predict a shortage, because of large carryover stocks. Anticipated shortfalls, if any, will be met as the United States brings idled acres back into production and as other nations expand production in response to higher prices. Although world stocks may fall to 62 days' supply by year's end, this is still higher than during much of the 1970s. Of the 300 million U.S. acres idled in the last six years, 90 percent could have been used for grain production. Regarding the rest of the world, there are 70 million acres of potential cropland in one region of Brazil alone, and greater productivity is anticipated in Soviet agriculture as the USSR moves into the Gorbachev era. And those are just two countries. With all this available land, production is not a problem.
As for the future, there is new technology on the drawing board or in the minds of man, and even some that cannot be imagined today, just waiting to be brought on stream. For example, the ramifications of biotechnology have perhaps more applications in the production of food and fiber than in any other field.
A handy fact that illustrates the vast unused potential in U.S. productive capacity in regard to wheat: Given the same level of would grain consumption of the past six years, if the United States had
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