Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures

Buy now from Amazon.com for $15.95
Amazon rating of 4.0 out of 5, Amazon sales rank: 32783

How human demands are outstripping the earth's capacities—and what we need to do about it.

Ever since 9/11, many have considered al Queda to be the leading threat to global security, but falling water tables in countries that contain more than half the world's people and rising temperatures worldwide pose a far more serious threat. Spreading water shortages and crop-withering heat waves are shrinking grain harvests in more and more countries, making it difficult for the world's farmers to feed 70 million more people each year. The risk is that tightening food supplies could drive up food prices, destabilizing governments in low-income grain-importing countries and disrupting global economic progress. Future security, Brown says, now depends on raising water productivity, stabilizing climate by moving beyond fossil fuels, and stabilizing population by filling the family planning gap and educating young people everywhere.

If Osama bin Laden and his colleagues succeed in diverting our attention from the real threats to our future security, they may reach their goals for reasons that even they have not imagined.

Reader Reviews:

Brown's thesis is that humanity is outgrowing the earth and putting world food security at risk. One might assume that Brown would support his thesis with charts and statistics on hunger, starvation, famine, nutrition and food prices... but one would be wrong. Outgrowing the Earth eschews all of this and instead focuses on global warming, dust storms, grain stocks, water tables and world population which are only indirectly related to food security.

The key to understanding world food security, Brown argues, is to understand world grain production. For example, the "Japan Syndrome" is a pattern of rapid industrialization followed by rising grain consumption, shrinking grainland and falling grain production (p10). Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have all followed this pattern and today they are heavily dependant on grain imports. Brown predicts that very soon China will also tumble down this path and that the world will be unable to produce enough grain to feed 1.2 billion Chinese. Brown warns that catastrophic starvation looms large in China's future.

Brown presents his discussions of water and livestock also in terms of grain production. Livestock is analyzed in terms of "protein efficiency." Fish are the most efficient at converting grain feed into live weight whereas steer are the least efficient (p44). Therefore, diets will need to shift from less efficient livestock to more efficient livestock as grain becomes increasingly scarce in the near future. In the chapter on water tables, Brown argues that when nations import grain they are, in a sense, importing water "since it takes a thousand tons of water to produce one ton of grain" (p111).

Brown's ideas about the Japan Syndrome, protein efficiency, and grain markets (i.e. water markets) are among the highlights of Outgrowing the Earth. Unfortunately, these are overshadowed by a fundamentally flawed thesis.

The problem with Brown's thesis is that recent history does not indicate an impending food catastrophe. The past 50-100 years have produced trends of falling food prices, better diets, improved nutrition, better access to clean water, less hunger, less famine and ever increasing agricultural productivity and efficiency. Brown concedes all of this but he chooses to wave such facts aside and treats his own tenuous predictions of future catastrophe as more compelling than the current real-life long-term trends of declining hunger and improving diets.

Often, Brown's ideas are plain silly. Brown believes that we can use arable land for either cropland or roads but not both. Hence, to preserve cropland Brown argues for more bicycles, more public transportation and less automobiles. He even engages in some class warfare: the competition between roads and cropland is "a struggle between the rich and the poor-between those who can afford automobiles and those who are struggling to get enough food to survive" (p93). Brown argues that wind erosion is carrying away precious topsoil and depositing it in the ocean. Wind erosion is such a serious problem in Africa that it is literally "draining the continent of its fertility" (p85). Apparently, Brown has no trouble believing that wind can carry away an entire continent's worth of topsoil! Fortunately, Brown has a solution: "for areas with strong winds and in need of electricity, such as northwestern China, wind turbines can simultaneously slow wind speeds and provide cheap electricity" (p93).

Over the past decades, plant breeders have greatly increased crop productivity by breeding hardier and pesticide resistant crops. Brown concedes that this is a good thing but he laments that plant breeders have been unable to "fundamentally improve the efficiency of photosynthesis." In fact the photosynthesis of today's crops "remains unchanged from that of their wild ancestors" (p62). Brown believes that this bodes ill for world food security.

Drip irrigation is more water efficient that current methods of irrigation, but alas, it's also very labor intensive (p113). Undeterred by the labor needs, Brown proposes that drip irrigation is well suited to countries suffering from both water shortages and high unemployment! Other deep thoughts from Outgrowing the Earth are that there are no substitutes for water and that people can "live for only a matter of days without water" (p99). Brown believes that governments should "coordinate population policy with water availability" and he's bewildered that "there appears to be no effort to do so" (p105). Notice that Brown's argument is not that water policy should be based on population but that "population policy" should be based on water availability! "Population policy" sounds like a euphemism for government restrictions on family size but Brown declines to go into specifics. In all seriousness, Brown proposes that wind power and bicycles are good for food security whereas automobiles are bad for food security. By the time Brown claims that water prices are "irrational" (p114) this reviewer was laughing out loud. I imagine that much of the world appears "irrational" to Brown.

The bulk of Outgrowing the Earth consists of many such imaginary problems and Brown's fanciful solutions. If you would also like to worry about paving over cropland, the stagnant efficiency of photosynthesis, and the wind then I recommend Outgrowing the Earth for you.

This is an outstanding work, highlighting the very likely risk of future global food shortages and food price inflation. During most of our western-world memory there was on oversupply of basic food and governments were concerned about too much grain and prices dropping too low. Lester Brown makes a very convincing case that the opposite is likely to happen in the future. His opinions are very well documented and based on plenty of statistics. this is an excellent and well written overview of the many challenges facing the world as it faces increasing demands for food and decreasing food supplies due to factors such as urbanization, global warming, increased population, water shortages. the author presents the issues in a factual and articulate manner without seeking to be too alarmist or anti-business. the book is short on rhetoric but full of relevant data from which the reader can form his/her own conclusions. it makes you think about food in an entirely new perpsective.

Share

Learn more...

Super Baby Food