If population and agricultural trends continue as predicted, there is no hope for sustainability in the year 2050. Many scientists argue that coping with the predicted population boom, that will bring us to over 9 billion people by 2050, will be easy. Unfortunately, all scientists are not as optimistic. In the article “How to Feed a Hungry World” the author focuses on increasing research and funding in order to be able to feed the increasing mouths of the world; however, Steve Connor, science editor of the UK newspaper “The Independent”, very bluntly states in his article “Overpopulation ‘is the main threat’”, that we will not be able to sustain the predicted population boost and that population control is needed.. It is inevitable that something needs to change in order to keep up with the predicted population boom of 2050; however, what path to take, the more humane option of agricultural research or the drastic action of population control, is up for debate, yet regardless of which path is chosen, the choice to do nothing will sure to leave us overpopulated.
According to an article “How to Feed a Hungry World” published in the July 29, 2010 editorial section of Nature, an official at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations claimed that the feeding the increasing population in 2050 should be “easily possible”. It is made clear in the article that theoretically it would be easy if the world just so happened to provide us with an abundance of extra land, the spreading of fertilizers and pesticides, and an increasing depletion of the limited groundwater supplies. Easy right? The article argues that this plan to increase the “resource-intensive, environmentally destructive agriculture” would not be one of best interest. The proposed solution would be to expand output drastically but without skyrocketing the amount of land used. This solution seems to be common sense, but how to bring the idea off paper and into the fields is where the research is needed. In order to make this idea work there needs to be a “second green revolution” described as “sustainable intensification of global agriculture”. There needs to be a shift in priorities of agricultural research in order to focus more on new crop varieties that yield more with less water, fertilizer or other inputs, more resistant crops, crop rotation, mixed farming or animals and plants, and soil management and curbing waste. It is stressed that research is the key to “enabling sustainable and productive agriculture”.
Steve Connor’s article “Overpopulation ‘is the main threat’” is very straightforward with the opinion regarding the population boom, and holds a very pessimistic outlook on the potential for sustainability if population trends continue as they have been. The topic of family planning with conjunction to the environmental problems has been deemed politically incorrect and is often thought of as “the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about” according to Professor Guillebaud. Despite how politically incorrect the topic may be, Guillebaud is determined to argue that we are currently using 20% more renewable resources than can be replaced each year ,and that if we were continue as planned, ” it would require the natural resources equivalent to four more Planet Earths to sustain the projected 2050 population of nine billion people”. This likeliness of this ever coming to reality is very slim. This article holds little hope for a population topping 9 billion by the year 2050 and the overall pessimism can be seen through Guillebaud’s final statement claiming "We urgently need to stabilise and reduce human numbers. There is no way that a population of nine billion - the UN's medium forecast for 2050 - can meet its energy needs without unacceptable damage to the planet and a great deal of human misery."
Oddly enough the two articles seem to share some common beliefs. “How to Feed a Hungry World”, despite its optimism that increased research will be enough to maintain sustainability, does acknowledge that research will not be the magical cure to world hunger by admitting “Poverty, not lack of food production, is the root cause.”. The article claims the world currently has more than enough food, yet over 1 billion people are hungry because they are unable to pay for it. Those who are unable to afford food are often times also those who are unable to have access to or afford any means of birth control. As a result of this fact, those living in poverty are often times also those contributing to the overpopulation of the world; therefore, increasing research to increase production of food would not prove valuable to feeding the increasing number of mouths born into poverty. Professor Rapley, an expert on the effects of climate change on the Antarctic, also addresses the fact that reducing human emissions into the atmosphere is critically important; however, it is still inevitable that population management is much needed.
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