Human Survival

[CapnAwesome]

We currently produce enough food to feed everyone on the planet. The only reason there are hungry people is one third of the food we produce is lost or wasted. There are several reasons for this. Chief among them is that developing nations waste a large percentage of the food they produce. Up to forty percent of it ends up in landfills. A large part of that is caused by consumers taking more than they need and throwing out what they don’t eat. But another part of the equation is that much of what is produced goes straight to the landfills. There is no profit in feeding the hungry.

The world is also capable of producing a considerable amount more food than it currently does. Productivity in developing countries is low when compared to developed ones. Just bringing the production levels of poor countries up to those of richer ones would allow us feed a considerably larger population. Investment in infrastructure in these countries would go a long way in increasing productivity levels. But once again, there is no profit in feeding the hungry.

We produce enough food to feed the population, but much of that is from non-renewable sources. Fishing is the most obvious example, already many fisheries are seeing drops in production. Even the obvious examples aside, many things that we see as renewable are not. Certain crops deplete the soils and cannot be regrown, many crops are dependent on the continued production of fossil fuels for fuel to run machinery and for use in fertilizer. Our current lifestyle is not sustainable for the population we even have because we won't be able to produce at even our current levels without depleting more resources.

I'm not sure that the second statement that you made, that food productivity in developing nations is less than in developed ones. Most first world countries don't produce enough food to feed themselves. All of Europe and Japan are massive food importers. The major exceptions are The United States (The worlds largest food exporters by far), Canada and Australia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_power These are relatively large and sparsely populated countries. Most of the world is not this way. The idea that third world countries like Rwanda or Haiti, which have dense (and growing) populations are going to be able to feed it's ever growing population through infrastructure is naive. Most of the usable land of these and other third world countries are already used for agriculture, they simply can't feed themselves because of dense populations. If Holland suddenly had nothing to export to the US and other food producing countries the would find themselves in the same situation shockingly fast. They just don't have the land to feed themselves.