A conference of food productivity experts in Sydney this week heard the greatest threat to the world is not climate change, but food production on land and in the water.
Science communicator Julian Cribb, an adjunct professor at the University of Technology Sydney, made a keynote address at the seminar saying there is expected to be about 9.2 billion people in the world in 2050, barring wars or major accidents.
But Professor Cribb says that population will create an alarming problem - there simply will not be enough food to go round.
"Basically what the world has not noticed is that hunger has been sneaking up on us for quite a while," he told ABC News Online.
"Population is growing and demand for food is rising.
"Governments have had it so good for so long - the world has had plenty of food - they have become complacent and ignorant.
"Climate change is going to get worse and worse, but the food problems are going to be in the next two to three decades.
"I'm warning now because it takes about a generation to develop new technologies and get them out broadscale. We need to take action now about these things."
Treasury head Ken Henry this week said that Australia's population growth is the biggest challenge to Commonwealth and state governments since Federation.
Professor Cribb agrees it will cause problems, and says governments must not forget future famine goes hand in hand with population growth.
"They have grossly underestimated the potential for population growth in Australia," he said.
"If you get a major collapse in food supply in an area like the north China plains or the Indo-Gangetic plains, there will be hundreds of millions of refugees cut lose so we could easily see 20 or 30 million refugees arrive in Australia over a couple of years.
"That's going to completely alter any plans we might have for a managed population growth.
"This is quite a dangerous situation. We may be OK for food, but if others are not, we will cop the backwash."
He says a range of issues have sparked current food production problems.
"Apart from the obvious things going on in the world food markets, there's a colossal shortage of water emerging because cities worldwide are pinching the farmers' water," he said.
"There's land degradation that's proceeded unabated for about 30 or 40 years now. We're losing land at the rate of 1 per cent of the world's farmland every year.
"We're running into energy shortages, we're running into shortages of fertilisers, and on top of that you've got climate change. All of these things are making the agricultural environment much less certain."
Professor Cribb says governments should be doing a range of things now to fix the problem.
"They need to focus on recycling water and nutrients, putting more science into agriculture to get farmers better technology, stopping cities from stealing farmers' land and water, paying farmers a better price so that they don't destroy the environment that produces the food and opening up free trade in agriculture," he said.
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Add the food concerns to the comments from the head of the Treasury, Ken Henry, who says Australia's population growth is the biggest challenge to Commonwealth and state governments since Federation.
Giving a speech in Brisbane on Thursday, Dr Henry talked about a projected 60 per cent increase in population by 2050, climbing from 22 million to 35 million by 2050. Where will those additional 13 million people live? And how well will they live?
Has Mother Earths carrying capacity been over extended? How many can she carry without damage to her? Is 6 billion a good number, or is it too many people? Or, is it too small, too pessimistic -- could we have 10 billion or 20 billion?
Remember, carrying capacity is defined as: The maximum number of individuals of a given species that can be supported.....on a sustainable basis.
Every year the average person in the western world is provided with:
- 100,000 kilograms(liters) of very clean water
- 1000 kilograms of food, including a lot of meat and exotic food
- 500 - 1000 kilograms of gasoline for transportation, imported.
- the equivalent of another 1000 - 2000 kilograms of gasoline in the form of electricity, imported or made from imported fuel
- tons of other industrial supplies such as sulfuric acid, steel, cement, commercial packaging, copper wire, industrial cleaning agents, plastics and other resins, cement, petroleum based dyes, glues and fabrics, etc., etc. Nearly all of this must be imported
- disposal systems that handle tons of solid waste, and clean and recycle a vast amount of dirty, unsanitary water for each person in the state.
When scientists say that the carrying capacity of the Earth is 2 billion, they are not forgetting that we have 6 billion already.
What they are saying is, that if you add up all the supplies in the world, and divide them up according to the amount that a typical westerner utilises, then there is only enough for 2 billion people.
We have some major challenges ahead. I suspect the first one to be faced by us all will be doing more with less. We are about to face the consequences of mankinds actions over the last few hundred years....chickens always come home to roost....a natural law I think many would prefer to pretend didn't exist.
What plans have you put into place to face the uncertainty of the days ahead?
Hope your Sunday is a good one!
Take care of you and yours.......and the planet :)
molly
