Feeding the World: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century
Editorial Reviews
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Can we do it? Plowing his furrow between the doomsayers and the blind optimists, agriculture researcher Vaclav Smil believes that our planet can sustain more than 10 billion people, and he makes his arguments clearly and plainly in Feeding the World: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century. His prescription is fairly simple: waste less, eat less, and produce more--and he shows just how easy it could be. Just like doctors' advice that the key to losing weight is to eat less and exercise more, which is ignored in favor of simpler and less effective plans, Smil's ideas are just unglamorous enough to fall by the wayside. Why not take the easy way out and decide either that we're all doomed or that market forces will mysteriously solve problems that they have yet to acknowledge exist?
Smil prefers to look coolly at our habits and suggest how we can make moderate changes to our production and consumption and reap great benefits of efficiency--and better health. You won't be surprised to learn that beef takes a beating in the race to convert solar energy to food, but you might not know that pigs and chickens are practically neck and neck. Of course, all of our two- and four-legged friends are eating the dust of the grains and vegetables, proving again that slow and steady wins the race. If Smil's ideas can get the attention they deserve, and if as he says "China could do it," then we ought to be able to look forward to an equitable, sustainable place at the table for everyone, even as our population reaches 11 digits. --Rob Lightner
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Scientific American
Smil's message is that it can be done. He sees "no insurmountable biophysical reasons why we could not feed humanity in decades to come while at the same time easing the burden that modern agriculture puts on the biosphere." For one, "there is a very high probability that humanity will not double in number again, and that its 2050 total of around 10 billion people may be very close to (or perhaps even a bit above) its long-term maximum." Moreover, there is plenty of room for "tightening up the slack in the food system." Smil, professor of geography at the University of Manitoba, regards himself as a Malthusian in the sense expressed by Thomas Robert Malthus--usually seen as asserting that the population will eventually outrun the food supply--in the second, rarely read, edition (1803) of his essay on population: "Though our future prospects respecting the mitigation of the evils arising from the principle of population may not be so bright as we could wish, yet they are far from being entirely disheartening."
EDITORS OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Feeding the World: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century
Feeding the World: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century,Vaclav Smil,The MIT Press,0262692716,Agriculture - General,Business / Economics / Finance,Environmental Science,General,Industries - General,Science/Mathematics,Technology,Science / Environmental Science
English Books:
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