Will the world starve in the 21st century?

In the 20th century, many people worried there would be a world food crisis in the early 21st century as the unstoppable surge in population overwhelmed mankind’s ability to produce food, which was nearing a natural ceiling. And now, the range of longer run concerns is even greater than it was. Worries unknown in the past have appeared. Global warming threatens to render once productive lands desolate. Scientists, in their quest for higher yielding crops, are using genetic engineering, a science which many believe to be dangerous.



Nonetheless, no one doubts that feeding the world’s growing population will require clever scientists. But it will also demand more of a rarer breed: brave politicians. In sum, shortage and hunger are not primarily about food at all. They are about poverty, and poverty should be addressed by policy changes because in the contemporary world, people are hungry because they are poor, not because the earth is running out of food.

globalpolitician