Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 16, 1993 TAG: 9309120270
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESTER R. BROWN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The world's production of steel, for example, had risen almost as reliably each year as the sun rises in the morning. The amount of coal extracted had risen almost uninterruptedly ever since the Industrial Revolution began. The harvest of grain had grown much faster than population since the middle of this century and the oceanic fish catch had more than quadrupled, doubling the consumption of seafood per person.
These rising curves were seen as basic measures of human progress; we expected them to rise. But now, within just a few years, these trends have reversed, with consequences we have yet to grasp. Caution is always appropriate in extrapolating from a few years' data, but in these cases the underlying factors are such that concern is warranted. Meanwhile, other trends that were going nowhere, or at most rising slowly, are suddenly soaring.
The discontinuities of the 1990s originate in the collision between expanding human numbers and needs and the constraints of the earth's natural systems. Among these are the capacity of the oceans to yield seafood, of grasslands to produce beef and mutton, of the hydrological cycle to produce fresh water, of crops to use fertilizer, of the atmosphere to absorb greenhouse gases, of people to breathe polluted air and of forests to withstand acid rain. These constraints drew dramatically closer between 1950 and 1990, as the global economy expanded nearly five-fold, upsetting the natural balances that had lent some stability to historical economic trends.
Another major source of pressure was unprecedented population growth. Those of us born before 1950 have seen world population double. In 1950, 37 million people were added to the world's population. Last year, 91 million were added. We struggle to find ways to grasp the magnitude of 91 million people. It means that we are adding 250,000 people to the world every day and a city the size of New York every month.
On a finite planet, Such growth is beginning to take a social toll. The production of grain, perhaps the most basic economic measure of human well-being, increased 2.6-fold from 1950 to 1984. Expanding at nearly 3 percent per year, it outstripped population growth, leading to an increase in per-capita grain consumption of 40 percent over the period, improving nutrition and boosting consumption of livestock products - meat, milk, eggs and cheese - throughout the world. But during the eight years since 1984, world grain output has expanded perhaps 1 percent per year - and in per-capita terms, it has declined 1 percent per year since then.
This faltering of basic foodstuffs was triggered by other, earlier discontinuities of growth - in the supply of cropland, irrigation water and agricultural technologies. Cropland, measured in terms of grain-harvested area, expanded more or less continuously from the beginning of agriculture until 1981. Since then, it has not increased at all. Gains of cropland in some countries have been offset by losses in others, as land is converted to nonfarm uses and abandoned because of erosion.
Similarly with irrigation. After the middle of this century, growth in irrigated area accelerated, averaging nearly 3 percent per year until 1978. Then, as the number of prime dam construction sites diminished and underground aquifers were depleted by overpumping, the growth of irrigated area fell behind that of population.
Although there was little new land to plow from mid-century onward, the world's farmers achieved the largest expansion of food output in history by dramatically raising land productivity. The engine of growth was fertilizer use, which increased nine-fold in three decades to 126 million tons in 1984 before starting to slow. In 1990, the rise in fertilizer use - which had been one of the most predictable trends in the world economy - came to a halt. In the former Soviet Union, fertilizer use actually dropped after 1988, as reforms moved fertilizer prices up to world market levels. More broadly, however, growth in world fertilizer use has slowed simply because existing grain varieties in the United States, Western Europe and Japan cannot economically use much more fertilizer.
The backlog of unused agricultural technology that began to expand rapidly in the mid-19th century appears to be diminishing. Most of the known means of raising food output are already in wide use. The highest-yielding rice variety available to farmers in Asia in 1993 was released in 1966 - more than a quarter-century ago. Today, progressive farmers are peering over the shoulders of agricultural scientists looking for new help in boosting production, only to find not much is forthcoming.
The growth in meat production, like that of grain, is slowing. Between 1950 and 1987, world meat production increased almost four-fold, boosting the amount per person from 18 kilograms to 32 kilograms (about 70 pounds). Since 1987, however, it has not increased at all. Underlying this overall stagnation is a rather dramatic slowdown in the production of beef and mutton, resulting from the inability of grasslands to support more cattle and sheep. From 1950 to 1990, world beef output increased 2.5-fold. But from 1990 to 1992 - with grasslands almost fully used or overused on every continent - per-capita beef production for the world fell 6 percent.
The supply of fish, like that of meat, no longer keeps pace with increases in human numbers. Here, too, there has been a reversal of the historic trend. Between 1950 and 1989, with the aid of increased numbers of ships and more sophisticated fishing technologies, the global catch expanded almost five-fold to 100 million tons. Now, United Nations marine biologists believe the oceans may have reached their limit. The world's ocean catch per capita declined 7 percent from 1989 until 1992 and is likely to continue declining if population continues to grow. As a result, seafood prices are rising steadily.
Getting more animal protein, whether in the form of beef or farm-raised fish, now depends on grain and soybean meal for feed. Those desiring to maintain animal protein intake now compete with those trying to consume more grain directly.
Of all the new trends that have become apparent in the past few years, however, the upward shift in the population growth trend may be most disturbing. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, declining fertility held out hope for braking population growth before it began to undermine living standards. The 1980s, however, turned out to be a lost decade, one in which the United States not only abdicated its leadership role, but also withdrew financial support from the U.N. Population Fund and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. This deprived millions of couples in the Third World of access to the family planning services needed to control the number or timing of their children.
That population growth could undermine living standards has now become a matter of deepening concern. In early 1992, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London together issued a report soberly warning that ``if current predictions of population growth prove accurate and patterns of human activity on the planet remain unchanged, science and technology may not be able to prevent either irreversible degradation of the environment or continued poverty for much of the world.''
\ Lester Brown is president of the Worldwatch Institute. This article is adapted from ``Vital Signs 1993: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future'' by Brown, Hal Kane and Ed Ayres.
The Washington Post
by CNB