Selection 28

Food Scarcity: An Environmental Wakeup Call

Lester Brown

This article discusses how if we keep using the earths resources that they will run out and we will eventually face economically disruptive climate change. He then goes into more detail about agriculture and how we will start to notice a rise in food prices, especially grain, when our environment is becoming economically unstable. Because the worlds population is growing we are needing to produce more food which is taking up more land. Even though in the last one hundred years there has been technologies developed for increasing productivity in agriculture, we are running out of land and the land we are using will eventually experience some kind of soil erosion. Along with land we are depleting our water sources. This is also due to over population and will also have an effect on the prices of food. Our increasing risk of food scarcity is a result of our over population and limited resources and may provide an environmental wake up call for the world.

To solve our problems of environmental degradation and ensure hope for future generations, Brown suggests that we stabilize population and climate. Some countries have already began implementing laws that only allow family's to have two children. We must reduce our carbon emissions and use new energy efficient technology to stabilize our climate. Our land and water use must be used with conservation in mind. Our food security of the future depends on creating an environmentally sustainable economy.