by boqueronman » Fri Sep 10, 2010 12:25 pm
Ok. Let's start with this paragraph from "Best. Decade. Ever." by Charles Kenney in the latest Foreign Policy magazine.
"There are still 1 billion people who go to bed each night desperately hungry, but cereal prices are now a fraction of what they were in the 1960s and 1970s. That, alongside continued income growth, is why the proportion of the developing world's population classified as "undernourished" fell from 34 percent in 1970 to 17 percent in 2008, even at the height of a global spike in food prices. Agricultural productivity, too, continues to climb: From 2000 to 2008, cereal yields increased at nearly twice the rate of population growth in the developing world. And though famine continues to threaten places such as Zimbabwe, hundreds of millions of people are eating more -- and better -- each day." Read the whole article.
Are you saying the data in the above paragraph are untrue? If so, what are the contrary data you have which refutes these conclusions? And, really, "my rough estimate[s]" won't do. There are many debatable assertions in your article, but let's just take a couple of pertinent issues.
The studies are overwhelming conclusive: the regional and country-specific food emergencies since WWII which lead to severe shortages and/or famine are, to use Janet Napolitano's mellifluous phrase for terrorism, "man-made disasters." To put it bluntly agricultural/food markets are consciously or unconsciously manipulated by governments in a manner which both ignites the emergency and sustains it. Thus, a public policy change or regime change can set the stage for a recovery. If, unfortunately, macro trends reverse and major cereal and basic food yields fall below population growth rates over a multi-generational period, then I think it's safe to say that people will develop coping strategies, e.g. substitute cheaper and more plentiful calorie sources for the "expensive" nutrition sources, such as protein from beef, before they take to consequential disturbances and sustained rioting.
Much of your analysis on likely trends and future events based on generational dynamic analysis is insightful and prescient. Unfortunately, to draw your conclusions on world wide food production and consumption contained here you've decided to drop your day job and become an agricultural economist. And to base the likely future on an assumption that somehow ingenuity and technology will cease to advance, or at least compensate, for the first time since the Industrial Revolution (which btw Mr. Malthus did not experience and failed to anticipate), usually turns out to be inaccurate.
Ok. Let's start with this paragraph from "Best. Decade. Ever." by Charles Kenney in the latest Foreign Policy magazine.
"There are still 1 billion people who go to bed each night desperately hungry, but cereal prices are now a fraction of what they were in the 1960s and 1970s. That, alongside continued income growth, is why the proportion of the developing world's population classified as "undernourished" fell from 34 percent in 1970 to 17 percent in 2008, even at the height of a global spike in food prices. Agricultural productivity, too, continues to climb: From 2000 to 2008, cereal yields increased at nearly twice the rate of population growth in the developing world. And though famine continues to threaten places such as Zimbabwe, hundreds of millions of people are eating more -- and better -- each day." Read the whole article.
Are you saying the data in the above paragraph are untrue? If so, what are the contrary data you have which refutes these conclusions? And, really, "my rough estimate[s]" won't do. There are many debatable assertions in your article, but let's just take a couple of pertinent issues.
The studies are overwhelming conclusive: the regional and country-specific food emergencies since WWII which lead to severe shortages and/or famine are, to use Janet Napolitano's mellifluous phrase for terrorism, "man-made disasters." To put it bluntly agricultural/food markets are consciously or unconsciously manipulated by governments in a manner which both ignites the emergency and sustains it. Thus, a public policy change or regime change can set the stage for a recovery. If, unfortunately, macro trends reverse and major cereal and basic food yields fall below population growth rates over a multi-generational period, then I think it's safe to say that people will develop coping strategies, e.g. substitute cheaper and more plentiful calorie sources for the "expensive" nutrition sources, such as protein from beef, before they take to consequential disturbances and sustained rioting.
Much of your analysis on likely trends and future events based on generational dynamic analysis is insightful and prescient. Unfortunately, to draw your conclusions on world wide food production and consumption contained here you've decided to drop your day job and become an agricultural economist. And to base the likely future on an assumption that somehow ingenuity and technology will cease to advance, or at least compensate, for the first time since the Industrial Revolution (which btw Mr. Malthus did not experience and failed to anticipate), usually turns out to be inaccurate.