-----Original Message-----
From: Jay Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: August 31, 1998 7:01 PM
Subject: New paper on Malthus by Catton
>Malthus: More Relevant Than Ever
>by William R. Catton, Jr.
>August 1998
>
>http://www.npg.org/forums/catton_malthus.htm
Dear Jay:
Having once again read suggested URL and found it challenging, I thought I
would copy a little information from Vital Signs, a publication by World
Watch that gives some "hard" evidence to support the recommended essay.
Grain Harvest Up Slightly by Lester Brown Page 28
The big news on the grain front is the apparent loss of momentum in the
growth of the world harvest during the 1990's. Even though the 11 million
hectares of cropland that were idled under U.S. farm commodity programs in
1990 (1.6% of the world grainland total) have been returned to production,
the world grain harvest has grown barely 1% a year since 1990.
The backlog of unused agricultural technology that farmers can use to raise
yields appears to be shrinking. For some farmers, such as U.S. wheat
growers and Japanese rice growers, there are simply not many unused
technologies available to raise yields. Even farmers in some developing
countries, such as wheat growers in Mexico and rice growers in South Korea,
are having difficulty sustaining the rise in yields.
Spreading water scarcity is also slowing growth in the harvest. The
fastest-growing grain import market during the 1990's is North Africa and
the Middle East. In this region, which stretches from Morocco through Iran,
demand is driven by record population growth rates and by oil-generated
gains in incomes. On the supply side, efforts to expand production in the
region are being hampered by water scarcity. In 1997, the water required to
produce the grain imported into this region was roughly equal to the annual
flow of the Nile.
The bottom line is that the world's farmers are now struggling to keep up
with the growth in demand. Despite unprecedented advances in technology in
fields usch as computers, telecommunications, and space exploration, the
ancient struggle to make it to the next harvest is emerging as a major
preoccupation of governments in many developing countries. (end of quote)
This cheerful analysis should be front page news every day.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
PS: The thought occurs that with the major flooding in China, Japan, Korea
plus the latent effects of El Nino in North America with climate changes and
weird weather that the 1999 World Watch publication may be much grimmer.
>
