Feeding the Ten Billion

"This is where it gets serious. It is estimated that we currently have seven billion people on the planet. The UN estimates that the population will continue to grow to at least nine billion, maybe ten billion. If you just think for a moment what that means – when I was born, 50 odd years ago, there were about two billion people on the planet. So, within my lifetime it’s gone from two to seven and certainly before my children are my age it will be nine or ten. How are we going to feed these people? That’s what this book is about. It goes through each billion, one at a time. So, between 8000 BC and 2000 BC the global population moved to 50 million. That’s a global population less than the current population of Britain. So, in those days it would be very unusual to bump into anybody who wasn’t immediately related to you. Cutting to the chase – how are we going to feed ten billion. What Evans says is: ‘To feed the ten billion without increasing the arable area will require an average yield of about five tons a hectare, beyond that reached by Europe and North America.’ His guess is that it will be done, but I’m not so optimistic. He thinks it will be done because there have already been, up to now, amazing increases in agricultural yield, because of plant breeding combined with the industrialisation of agriculture. He says that the need to do this is so great that, provided we invest in the science and technology, it can be done. He admits it’s something of an act of faith though. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Well, that would be even worse! I’ve got a book behind me on the shelf called Our Final Century by Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal. So, obviously, if we don’t manage it then, I suppose, that solves the problem. But otherwise it’s inevitable we’ll get to nine billion. For example, half the population of Egypt is under 15. They’ll grow up and have families. You only have to do the maths, as they say. Evans thinks it’s technically possible to feed them, but obviously there’s a lot of politics involved and so on. It’s a sobering book to read and it raises all kinds of questions. We have to ask ourselves what technology would be involved and, if it was necessary to use GM technology, could we really afford to say no? Evans concludes that we’ve managed to produce more and more food and as long as we use science to do this then we could feed ten billion people. You could regard that as good news. But how much of nature would be left if we use most of the planet to grow food? We’d have to expand the land area being used to grow food. Plus, if we’re going to use biofuels some of that land area will have to go into running our cars. What will be left of wild nature if we fail to exploit to the full all the land we’re already using? These are tough choices."