Out of the Demographic Trap: Hope for Feeding the World

Paradoxically, this is good news, says U.S. demographer Joel Cohen. “We know we can feed 10 billion people, because we are already growing enough — if they have a vegetarian diet.” The real threat is consumption patterns, not “overpopulation.” But at least we know the world can be fed.

A second cause for optimism is that farm yields in most of the world are a small fraction of the potential using existing seeds. Africans typically grow
one tonnes of grain on a hectare, Asians grow three tonnes and Europeans and North Americans upwards of five tonnes. Futurologist Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University in New York says that “if during the next 50 years or so, the world’s farmers reached the average yield of today’s U.S. corn grower, ten billion could be fed with only half of today’s cropland, while they eat today’s U.S. calories.”

That may be far-fetched. But the flipside of our reckless management of water and soils is that we could do things so much better. Conservation farming has vast potential to protect soils. And simple drip irrigation systems could halve global water use by farmers. It’s not rocket science. It’s just tubes with holes in.

Of course, it is one thing to ensure there is enough food on the global dinner table, but quite another to make sure everyone has a seat at the table. Subsistence farming communities make up the majority of the world’s hungry. It matters little to them whether the global grain warehouses are full if their village granaries are empty.

The next agricultural revolution needs to get local. It needs to help these poor farming communities find ways to manage their own soils better by using livestock to fertilize soils, conserving rainwater in case of drought, breeding and exchanging local crop varieties, and finding natural predators for troublesome pests.

In particular we are talking about Africa. Malthusian thinking holds sway here. Many would agree with British demographic doomster Maurice King of Leeds University, who argues in an editorial he co-authored that “large parts of sub-Saharan Africa are demographically trapped... committed to a future of starvation and slaughter.”

But such pessimism is dangerous. It echoes the Malthusian fatalism that the British used to excuse their inaction during the Irish potato famine a
century and a half ago: “nothing to be done... too many people... brought it on themselves... better let the carnage play out.”

More importantly, the idea of overpopulated Africa simply is not true. The continent contains 11 of the world’s 20 least-densely populated nations and only one of the 20 most densely populated. Africa’s problem is bad agriculture, not too many people.

Robert Watson, chair of the UN’s International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, which reported in 2008, says of Africa: “Today’s hunger can be addressed with today’s technology. It’s not a technical challenge, it’s a rural development challenge. Farm yields across the continent can be raised from a typical one tonnes per hectare to four or five tonness.”

It can be done. Good news is not hard to find in Africa. And often — as in Machakos — it is more people, not fewer, that can be the key.

Machakos is certainly not unique. In the highlands of western Kenya, the Luo people showed me how they were replacing their fields of maize with a landscape richer both commercially and ecologically. They had planted woodlands that produced timber, honey, and medicinal trees. I saw napier grass, once regarded as a roadside weed, sold as feed for cattle kept to provide milk and manure.
In West Africa, Dutch geographer Chris Reij has charted a similar revival since the famines of the 1970s. Again, he says, it is labour-intensive management of the land that often holds the key. “The idea that population pressure inevitably leads to increased land degradation is a much repeated myth,” he says. “It does not. Innovation is common in regions where there is high population pressure. This is not surprising. Farmers have to adapt to survive.”

There will be exceptions — distressing situations where farmers are unable to rescue their declining environments, and places where fast-rising populations trigger a dangerous tailspin of decline, and where land disputes, war, and bad government leaves communities incapable of harnessing their human resources. But to suggest that Africa is doomed is a dangerous lie. Demography may help drive communities to crisis, but it does not define how they respond.

And as with Africa, so perhaps with the planet. I bring good news: human ingenuity. Rising populations may bring more mouths to feed, but they also bring more hands to work and brains to think. We are not done yet.