Malthus is back. And is back when humanity is feeding more people than ever. The recent economic growth of some crowded
countries like China and India have emptied the stocks of food and set up a rise trend in prices. This fact is bringing the specter of
hunger to the poorest that can not afford the new cost of cereals, mainly. The trend one see now is not the confirmation of Malthus ideas but a period of adjustment to a new level of food consumption. To keep up on this new demand there are some countries, like Brazil, that has still land to produce huge amounts of crops and a never ending process of perfecting the means to cultivate land. From the second half of the last century to our present days one see more food being cropped in the same area, due a scientific approach agriculture have taken to deal with land use.
Brazil is a typical case of success when it comes to plant in areas thought to be useless sometime ago. In the central plains of this tropical country we find a vastness of land now being used to plant soybeans, sugarcane, maize and to cattle raising. Those acid land were not fit to efficient use until one correct its acidity, but once this is made the land responds in an amazing way. Through abundant sun and rain, the productivity is one of the best that may be expected, although the land natural fertility is not so good.
Brazil has a total land mass of 850 millions of hectares, of which about seventy million is in use for planting crops and other two hundred million used as pastures. Today’s feud about the use of food to make biofuels is not a real issue when it comes to analyse Brazil’s particular case. For this is a country with enough land to make not only twice or more food already cropped but one hundred times the ethanol now output, and all this without touching the rainforest so dear to the rest of the world.
I think Brazil’s enormous riches in its woods should be used not destroying it to serve as grazing fields or soy plantations, but extracting from it economic value contained in the natural resources already at disposal. In order to achieve this ideal we must know the forest better and explore rationally the wood and other biological wealth it has forsure.
Maybe we cannot find other place so well endowed to feed the world than the vast lands of Brazil. There, we have sun and rain in the more regular fashion than in any other so great territory. In addition to it, brazilians have in recent years achieved a great deal of knowledge about agriculture technics applied to tropical environment that is improving its efficiency and productivity.
When portuguese arrived in South America, five centuries ago, the fertility of its land was so evident that the expedition scribe, Pero Vaz de Caminha, in charge of describing the new colony, said that in planting it everything crops well. Future was going to prove he guessed well what was behind the coastland of the huge territory, for almost all the Brazil’s soil and climate is fit for agriculture. Although agriculture technics is best developed in Europe and US, these temperate and cold places lack the amount of sun light with the abundant water supply that tropical Brazil has. Without good technology this would be not enough, but although not a rich country, in that particular, Brazil achieved impressive development in land management.
The demographic growth is now moderate and there is a process of stabilization of the total world population, but to feed six billion people is not an easy task. Mainly when large amounts of the world population is changing their food intake patterns, becoming meat eaters instead of vegetables eaters. This is a trend that puts a pressure in cereals crops to feed livestock, what diminishes the efficiency in feeding humanity.
It is a typical trend in human path, to be more efficient in producing anything and, at the same time, becoming more irrational and wasteful in dealing with human habits.
The more affluent is a society the more it tends to behave in a wasteful manner and jeopardizing its own health prospect. These trends implies in eating meat instead of vegetables, exercising less and using more machines that requires a lot of energy that demands the destroying nature resources and polluting the environment. So, the biggest problem today is not properly to feed humanity but forget wasteful consumption of all kind of commodities.
Malthus dreadful insights may become true in a different way if human habits go on increasing its appetite for luxuries and endless consumerism. Some of the bottlenecks for the present pattern of consumption are in the horizon and the end of petroleum is seen just in the next corner. Of course, we are not going to see the last drop of oil to be taken from the underground because, as sheik Yamani said some years ago, the oil era is going to end not for lack of oil, in the same way the end of stone age did not end for lack of stones.
The end of cheap energy supply may result in a world with less machines, less comfort and, in the end, less food and Malthus prophecy coming true.