POSTSCRIPT
capita and increase internal grain de-
Global population, food and
the environment
T he world population continues to
increase faster than the global food
supply. Reports from the Food and
Agricultural Organization of the United
Nations and numerous other inter-
national organizations and scientists con-
firm the existence of this serious food
problemlJ. For example, the per capita
availability of world grains, that makes
up 80% of the world’s food, has been de-
clining for the past 10 years. In addition,
with a quarter million people being
added to the world population every 24
hours, the need for food and cropland
continues to grow rapidly.
Roughly 99% of the world’s food
supply comes from land. In many cases
there are shortages of cropland, fresh
water and fossil energy resources that
are essential for food production. The
availability of these basic resources is
decreasing as the needs of the human
population for food increase.
In addition, arable land is being
lost. For instance, during the past 40
years nearly one-third of the world’s
cropland (1500 million hectares) has
been abandoned because of erosion and
degradation. Most of the added land
that replaces this loss has come from
marginal land made available by remov-
ing forests. Agriculture accounts for 80%
of the world deforestationl.2. Despite
such land addition by deforestation,
arable land per capita has been declin-
ing and is now only 0.28 ha per capita.
This is much less than the US average
of 0.5 ha per capita, which is considered
minimal for a diverse diet of animal
and plant food product@. This short-
age of productive cropland is, in part,
the cause of food shortages and poverty
that many humans are experiencing
today.
All vegetation requires and tran-
spires massive amounts of water during
the growing season. For example, a corn
crop that produces about 7000 kg/ha of
grain will take up and transpire about
4.2million liters/ha of water during the
growing season. To produce 1 kg of corn
grain under irrigation requires about
1400 liters of fresh water.
The greatest threat to maintaining
fresh water supplies is overdraft of sur-
face and groundwater resources to supply
the needs of the rapidly growing human
population and of the agriculture which
provides its food. Agricultural production
‘consumes’ more fresh water than any
other human activity. Worldwide, about
87% of the fresh water is ‘consumed’
(non-recoverably) by agricultures.
Water resources, critical for irri-
gation, are also being stressed as more
populous cities, states and countries with-
draw more water every year. Presently,
40% of the world’s people live in re-
gions that compete for water. Related to
these growing shortages is the decline
in per capita irrigation used for food
production in the arid regions of the
worldlJ.
Modern techniques for farming in de-
veloped countries need massive amounts
of fossil fuel for fertilizers, pesticides,
irrigation and the replacement of labor4.
In developing countries, the use of energy
has been primarily for fertilizers, pesti-
cides and irrigation to help prevent
starvation rather than to reduce labor
inputs4. This increasing demand for fos-
sil energy is another major problem to
expanding intensive food production be-
cause of the increasing price of oil. This
is especially a problem for developing
countries, The high price of imported oil
has contributed to heavy indebtedness
in some developing countries and to
their decreasing ability to purchase fer-
tilizers and pesticides as well as power
for machinery and irrigation4.
Frequently, economic analyses tend
to overlook biophysical constraints to
food production and assume that the
market mechanism and international
trade are an effective insurance against
future food shortages. A rich economy is
supposed to guarantee an adequate food
supply to match internal demand in spite
of local ecological constraints. However,
when global biophysical limits to food
production are reached, ‘import’ is no
longer an option for humankind. At that
point, food imports for the rich are sus-
tained by starvation of the poor.
These concerns are supported by
two observations. First, most of the
183 countries of the world are now to
some degree dependent on food im-
ports. Most of these imports come from
cereal surpluses produced in only a few
countries that have a relatively low popu-
lation density and intensive agriculture.
For instance, in 1989, the USA, Canada,
Australia, Oceania and Argentina pro-
vided more than 81% of net cereal export
on the world market4. An increase in
population density in these countries
will decrease arable land available per
0 1994. Elsevier
mand; this will seriously erode the cereal
surplus for export on the international
market.
Second, many developing countries
rely heavily on fossil energy, especially
in the form of fertilizers, to sustain their
internal food supply4. A future slowdown
of fossil energy consumption (because of
either a decline of oil supplies, an increase
in oil prices or growing restrictions on
fossil fuel use to limit its environmental
impacts) will generate a direct compe-
tition between energy use in developed
countries, to sustain a high standard of
living, and that in developing countries,
to provide an adequate food supply for
survival.
There are more than one billion
humans who are already malnourished,
indicating a combination of insufficient
food and inadequate distribution5. This
is the largest number of hungry humans
ever in history. With the world popu-
lation projected to double from 5.6 billion
to more than 11 billion in about 40 years,
the world food problem is expected to
become much more severe - perhaps
three to four billion humans malnour-
ished by that time. In order to help in-
crease food supplies, there is need to
conserve land, water, energy and bio-
logical resources. More efficient and en-
vironmentally sound agricultural tech-
nologies must be developed and put into
practice. Yet none of these measures will
be sufficient to ensure adequate food
supplies unless the growth of the human
population is reduced worldwide.
David Pimentel
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences,
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-0901, USA
Mario Giampietro
National Institute of Nutrition,
00178 Rome, Italy
References
Pimentel, D., Harman, R., Pacenza, M.,
Pecarsky, J. and Pimentel, M. (1994)
Population and Environment 15 (5).
347-369
Kendall, H.W. and Pimentel. D. Ambio
(in press)
Postel, S. (1989) Wuter for Agriculture: Facing
the Limits, Worldwatch Institute
Giampietro, M. and Pimentel, D. (1993)
The Tightening Conflict: Population, Energy Use,
and the Ecology of Agriculture, The Negative
Population Growth Forum (October)
Kates, R.W. et al. (1989) The Hunger Report
Update 1989, Alan Shawn Feinstein World
Hunger Program. Brown University, USA
Science Ltd 239