The future of our food supplies.

ITH WELL-PUBLICISED mountains of butV ter, meat, and milk powder, and lakes of wine, v v together with new possibilities of lakes of olive oil there do not appear to be any problems about our future food supplies. However, failures of basic crops especially wheat, and shortages of animal feed supplements from soya beans and fish meal do impress on us the vulnerability of our position and the temporary nature of a glut. Against the world figures of food consumption the surpluses represented by the mountains of Europe are extremely small. It is 200 years since Malthus pointed out that while food production increases arithmetically, population increases geometrically so that population must inevitably outstrip food supplies. The opening up of new lands, the manufacture of nitrogen fertilisers and the improved varieties of both plant and animal crops together with vastly improved methods of agriculture and animal husbandry have postponed Malthus’s prediction but for how long? So far food supplies, overall, have kept pace with increasing population. In the ten years between 1963 and 1973 world population increased by 21 per cent and food supplies by 33 per cent, but this was unevenly distributed. In the industrialised countries a population increase of only 10 per cent was accompanied by a 33 per cent increase in food production, while in the developing countries population increased by z5 per cent and food by 32 per cent. A similar pattern occurred in the preceding decade between 1954 and