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How will we feed 9 billion people in 2050?

Redditch Vegetarians & Vegans | 25.01.2010 17:29 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Birmingham

A talk & debate in Redditch on Wed 3 February will deal with one of the most urgent issues facing the world today. Our planet already suffers devastating damage due to intensive food production. Fertile land is turned to desert, food & water supplies are under intense pressure and yet, world population growth continues to go through the roof. Whilst governments pour resources into tackling terrorism, Global Food Security is a far more serious threat to people across the globe.

Press Release - 25/1/10

HOW WILL WE FEED 9 BILLION PEOPLE IN 2050??

On Wednesday 3 February, a talk and debate in Redditch will address this critically important question. Amanda Baker, PR and Media Officer for The Vegan Society (based in Birmingham) will present the talk and suggest that Stock-free, vegan agriculture is the answer. [1]

Today, over 1 billion people worldwide are undernourished. The global human population is set to increase from 6.7 billion to 9 billion by 2050, with the majority of the increase in developing countries. At the same time, demand for fresh water and agricultural land is rising and global trends towards unsustainable Western meat and dairy-based diets are increasing.

Increasingly, respected organisations such as the United Nations, are blaming the livestock farming industry for environmental damage & food shortages. The UN's report, Livestock's Long Shadow, said that livestock production is at the heart of almost every environmental catastrophe confronting the planet. The UN have called on the world's farmers to urgently switch to sustainable farming methods which can feed everyone. [2] [3]

Vegan-Organic (or Stock-free Organic) is a system of cultivation that excludes artificial chemicals, livestock manures and animal remains from slaughterhouses. [4]

Amanda Baker says, "The planet cannot feed us all if we continue to rely on animal farming. The global animal farming industry is a food destruction system. I will outline how stock-free organic farming works, and how it is already proven to be sustainable."

The event is hosted by the Redditch Vegetarian & Vegan group(RVV). [5]

Kevin White of RVV said, "The effects of climate change are exacerbating the problems, threatening food production in some already vulnerable areas of the world. Clearly changes need to be made in order to ensure future global food security and provide for those who even now are not being fed." [6]

The talk and debate will take place from 7.30pm at St Georges Community Hall, St Georges Road, Redditch. Admission is free and everyone is welcome. Free refreshments will be available.

Anyone wanting further details should see RVV's website www.redditchveggies.org.uk or call 01527 458395.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

1. Contact Amanda Baker from The Vegan Society  media@vegansociety.com 0121 523 1737  http://www.vegansociety.com/

2. Livestock's Long Shadow  http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM

3. UN "Farming must change to feed the world"  http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/9962/icode/

4. The Vegan Organic Network  http://www.veganorganic.net/

5. Redditch Vegetarians and Vegans  http://www.redditchveggies.org.uk/

6. Kevin White is the Green Party parliamentary candidate for Redditch  http://www.redditchgreens.org.uk/


-----------------------------------------------------
Redditch Vegetarian & Vegan Society
PO Box 10202, Redditch, Worcs B98 8YT
Tel: 01527 458395
Email:  reddiveggie@lycos.com
Website: www.redditchveggies.org.uk

Redditch Vegetarians & Vegans
- Homepage: http://www.redditchveggies.org.uk

Additions

'Overpopulation': letting capitalism off the hook

27.01.2010 12:36

'Overpopulation': letting capitalism off the hook
Monday, October 6, 2008
The text below was written collectively by Manchester No Borders for Shift Magazine. It is a result of discussions in the group, and of the debates at the 2008 Camp for Climate Action, where we hosted a workshop on the topic. We have received lots of support/interest when we started engaging with the 'overpopulation' argument and would welcome further discussion of it within the No Borders network and beyond.

From when we started being active as a No Borders group in Manchester we have been frustrated with a lack of radical analyses and critiques (anti-state, anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, anti-discrimination etc.) of climate change. This was particularly so, as we became aware of a ‘greening of immigration controls’. There appears to be an increasing tendency for green politics to lean towards repressive measures as solutions to the environmental crisis.

More specifically, in discussions with other (environmental) activists, we have recently found ourselves in disagreement over the issue of ‘overpopulation’. A common green orthodoxy today is that there are too many people on this planet, and that we need to do something about it. (Although as we gave a well-attended workshop at the Climate Camp on this topic, we were positively surprised how many of the participants were critical of this stance.)

In this article, we want to spell out the dangers of the ‘the planet is full’ argument and argue that ‘overpopulation’ is not the root cause of climate change. Not people are the problem, but society. Not human beings per se, but the way our social life is organized: capitalism.

There are two levels to our criticism of the ‘overpopulation’ argument. One, the argument quite simply plays into the hands of governments, nationalists and anti-feminists who are quite happy to step up demographic controls, people management and anti-immigration policies. Two, interpreting population growth as the root cause of the climate crisis completely disregards the systemic nature of the problem and thus lets capitalism off the hook.

The overpopulation argument

So where is the problem? The UN projects that world population figures will rise from today's 6.8 billion to 9.2 billion by 2050. For the prophets of demographic doom, Britain, in particular, is under threat. Government projections are that the UK population is to rise from 60.6 million (mid-2006) to 77 million in 2050. Obviously, demographic modeling contains lots of cultural and political assumptions, and should be treated as politically informed rather than neutral observations. Human population behavior is very random and unpredictable and not something that can be forecasted as unproblematically as tomorrow’s weather, say (and you know how inaccurate that is!).

Whatever the assumption, an increasing amount of global players (from government agencies to international organizations, from think tanks to celebrities) conclude that the planet is full. They argue that any such densely populated area as Britain would be unsustainable in terms of food production, housing and energy needs. Also within the green movement this is not a marginal position and no longer limited to ‘deep ecologists’. The green-nationalist think tank ‘Optimum Population Trust’, for example, estimates that the UK can only sustain less than half its current population level. And they demand a national population policy that first stabilizes the number of people in the UK and then gradually brings it down to 30 million.

Fact is however, that the UK population is growing primarily because of immigration. The argument thus is threefold. First, immigration puts pressure on national resources such as water, energy, food and countryside. Second, new migrants tend to have more children than the national population thereby accelerating the problem. Third, migration to ‘first world’ countries turns previously low-impact consumers to high-impact consumers increasing their ecological footprints. It comes as no surprise to us, then, that the BNP calls itself the ‘real Green Party’.

The government’s chief green advisor, Jonathan Porritt, has also time and again argued this point. But what to do? Porritt’s suggestion is straightforward: zero net immigration! David Cameron also agrees that rapid population increase will put pressure on our natural resources. And again, his solution is to lower net immigration:

“my focus today is on population, and here we should note that only around thirty per cent of the projected increase in our population by 2031 is due to higher birth rates and longer life-spans…the evidence shows that roughly seventy per cent - more than two thirds - of the increase in our population each year is attributable to net migration. Of that increase, forty seven per cent comes directly from people to moving to Britain, and the rest from higher birth rates amongst immigrant populations.”

The feminist dimension

It becomes clear that in a sexist, imperialist, capitalist world, it is impossible to separate discussion of population control from hierarchies of oppression. Which population is going to be “controlled” and how will this control come about?

Any form of population control risks seriously impinging upon women’s right to bodily autonomy. State-enforced population control programs, such as China’s ‘one-child policy’, are usually enacted upon women’s bodies; it is women who are forced to have abortions, to undergo sterilisation, or to take long-term birth control products (often with serious health repercussions). Rarely are men forced to undergo vasectomies, despite the relative easiness of this procedure when compared to tubal ligation.

However, not all women will be affected equally; those from the Global South, ethnic minorities, those perceived as disabled, and the working class have historically borne the brunt of population control policies. Eugenicists in Victorian England were very clear about which segments of the population needed controlling: the poor and the disabled.

More recently, Black British feminists in the 1970s and 1980s wrote about the need to campaign for abortion rights while at the same time also fighting for their right not to have abortions and not to be pressured into sterilisation. At the same time dangerous forms of birth control, like early experimental forms of Depo-Provera, were being tested upon women in the Global South (and in predominantly African-American areas of the US) before being allowed for sale in the Western world. Today, women in the Global South are often ‘encouraged’ by NGOs to use long-term forms of birth control, like implants, that require a medical attention to stop (as opposed to something like The Pill, which can be stopped at any time by the woman taking it). This history cannot be ignored today when discussing population control in the UK. As single working-class mothers, immigrants and ethnic minorities (particularly Muslims) find themselves being increasingly demonised; any population control policies will target women from these groups.

Malthus

Throughout its history then the overpopulation argument has been used to present people and children as the source of inherently social problems: letting capitalism off the hook. The argument always goes like this: there are too many of us and the planet can’t hack it. Whether it’s the poor, the Jews, women or migrants, all have been used strategically as scapegoats for an irrational and unproductive use of space and resources within a capitalist economy.

One of the most prominent writers on over-population was Thomas Malthus, a 19th century cleric of the Church of England. His treatise on over-population “A summary view of the principle of population” was printed in 1830, but is still read widely today. Malthus stated that whilst population increased at a geometric rate (1, 2, 4, 8, 16…), doubling every 25 years, food production increases at an arithmetic rate (1, 2, 3, 4, 5…). Malthus believed this disparity between food production and population growth was the root cause of “checks to (human) growth” such as war, famine and disease.

The strong strand of prejudice within Malthus’ work, however, often goes unacknowledged by neo-Malthusianists. He saw poverty as deserved rather than produced and blamed the poor for their “lack of moral restraint” thus making them the primary focus of population policy. The inherent conservatism and class prejudice hidden behind a veneer of scientific objectivity has made Malthus a popular source of intellectual legitimacy for various conservative and authoritarian positions.

In the late 19th century Eugenicists began utilising and expanding on Malthus’s critique of the rapid population growth of the poor. Eugenicists argued that this lack of restraint was genetically inherited and posed a threat to the future of the nation. A prominent eugenicist was Winston Churchill and many discriminatory laws were passed to attempt to influence the outcome of breeding. Once again systemic problems were naturalised and projected upon the very people most negatively affected by them.

Neo-Malthusianism

Many anti-migration authors have also mobilised Malthusian ideas. These arguments have relied upon an analysis of national resources as closed and finite systems and exaggerating rates of migration. Proposals for the closing of borders are contrasted with images of swarms of migrants exhausting national resources like locust. One example of this nationalist position, which supports the competitive nature of states, is this quote from the ‘Population and environment’ journal:

“Countries that are in the lead in reducing their populations should not give in to advocates of growth by allowing massive immigration. This rewards those who multiply irresponsibly”

As environments change due to climate change the monster of ‘overpopulation’ is being resurrected as a security issue. As we are seeing with climate change, environmental issues provide a space for the legitimisation of conservative and authoritarian policies.

Perhaps one of the most influential of these authors was Garrett Hardin whose essay “The Tragedy of the Commons”, printed in 1968, masked a pro-private property stance beneath a veneer of scientific objectivity. Hardin believed that, without private ownership of natural resources, unchecked population growth would lead to their exhaustion. The same arguments were used to support the 20th century ‘green revolution’ and are appearing again with the G8 leaders in Japan agreeing to extend research into GM crops to deal with ‘overpopulation’. ‘Overpopulation’ is used as a convenient argument to support the agendas of specific political and economic actors.

But let’s not attack a straw man here. None of the green progressives here in the UK argue for more stringent migration controls (in contrast to parts of the green conservationist movement in the US). Nonetheless, we have witnessed population graphs being used in climate change presentations, which could have lead to knee-jerk reactions and dangerous political conclusions when taken out their left-wing context.

Earth First?

The climate action movement of course recognises the repression faced by migrants and the fact that the groups of people who are hit hardest by climate change are in the Global South. However, even with the best intentions of warding off ecological destruction and creating better lives for people in the face of climate chaos the ‘overpopulation’ argument still ignores the systemic logic behind climate change: capitalism.

The central flaw to Malthusian thought is its a-systemic nature. Regardless of the economic system or social organisation, it views the root cause of most human suffering as population growth, and in particular the threat of the poor becoming richer (and thus consuming more). Poverty however, is produced not bred, and by projecting systemic flaws onto those it most affects neo-Malthusianism both helps to protect the status quo from criticism and construct vulnerable social groups as legitimate targets of control.

As relatively rich Western countries consume the most energy, it is often argued that it is their populations, in particular, that should be curbed, whether by authoritarian state control, or by individuals in the West simply realizing it is their moral responsibility not to reproduce. But to imply that the Earth should come before a child can lead down a dangerous path. It may lead to a resentment of those social groups that migrate or reproduce more often than others.

Besides, social, economic and cultural pressures to have or not to have children cannot be tackled through individual lifestyle choices and guilt trips. An emancipatory response to climate change requires a political and social solution.

We should be attacking capitalism, not children and families. In a world where children are killed over oil and exploited at the hands of multi-national corporations it isn’t surprising that children will eventually be blamed for capitalism’s fuck-ups. Capitalism doesn’t make sense and neither do capitalist solutions. The ‘overpopulation’ argument ignores the contradictions inherent in capitalism that mediate the relationship between human beings and the environment and already limit our freedom and desires on a real everyday level.

Instead of acknowledging the unprecedented global disasters that seem to spiral as capitalism grows and spreads its destructive wings, the ‘overpopulation’ argument asks not for a new form of social organisation (that might see land and resources accessed and shared more evenly, contributing to less poverty, more sustainable lifestyles and fewer wars) but takes the shameful and hopeless route of asking people to have fewer children. In a world where we are repeatedly screwed over we are now being asked not to screw!

liberal apologists for capitalism need birth control


Comments

Hide the following 11 comments

cant make the event but....

25.01.2010 17:56

Aswell as veganism its worth mentioning:

Stop wasting 30-50% of all food produced for this and many other countrys.
Stop inefficently converting countries of the global south from self sustaining food crop production to cash crop production, reverse this process.
Scrap bio fuel plans.
Scrap the scientifically retarded idea of tree planting as carbon offsetting - especially when the trees are generally monoculture plantations taking up valueable land space and of no use to people or other animals.
Revert to small scale farming which is far more efficent per hectre of land.
Prevent all 'intensive' farming that leads to unuseable land in the long run.

Population is NOT the problem, the waste of capitalism is.

Also about the use of scare tactics regarding 'X millions/billions of people and only Y amount of food', I think it can create space for people with more sinister motives than encouraging veganism.
ie. The population debate has often been hijacked by those with a fetish for eugenics, a hate of immigrants, or genuine 'i want less non whites to exist anywhere in the world' crazy racists.

I think its time enviromentalists refused to give time to anyone like the optimum population trust and their scray ideas of some how vastly 'reducing' the popluation. I'm not saying we should silence these debates... Just be aware of the motives behind some of those who use these debates, the history of population politics, and the real factors that cause famine.

A recent no one is illegal paper on this subject is worth a read:  http://www.noii.org.uk/2010/01/13/too-many-of-whom-and-too-much-of-what/


Apologies for nearly offtopic but not quite post!

Ether


re: Population is NOT the problem, the waste of capitalism is.

26.01.2010 09:47

re: "Population is NOT the problem, the waste of capitalism is."

How about both are the problem? Surely it's a logical truism that a finite space has an upper limit on how many people it can support? To suggest otherwise is just sticking your head in the sand and hoping the problem will go away, which puts billions of people at risk of starvation, disease, war, etc. in years to come.

"I think its time environmentalists refused to give time to anyone like the optimum population trust and their scray ideas of some how vastly 'reducing' the population."

I don't see any reference to the OPT in this article, so what on earth are you talking about? Just because some bigots and racists oppose overpopulation doesn't mean it's not a problem.

I think it's time environmentalists refused to give time to anyone like overbreeders and their scary ideas that somehow a finite planet can support an exponentially growing population indefinitely.

All the solutions you list will certainly help in the short term, but they can't work miracles, and in the long term billions of people will die unless we can sort this out ourselves.

anon


How will we feed 9 billion people in 2050?

27.01.2010 08:35

scarey article, scarey comments. "overbreeders" wtf? leave people alone, most wont have large families through choice because it is no longer financially beneficial to have large families.

as best we can


@as best we can

27.01.2010 13:47

"leave people alone, most wont have large families through choice because it is no longer financially beneficial to have large families."

Well, I certainly hope so. But the world is creaking at the seams already and things that are important to our quality of life are disappearing at an alarming rate: clean air, clean water, rainforests, wilderness, etc.

Are you certain that financial constraints will cause the population to stabilise at a sustainable level before we reach the stage of mass famines, disease and wars?

I'm just worried that people sticking their fingers in their ears and dismissing the problem is going to cause a large amount of human suffering in the long term.

I'm not talking about people in the developing world, when I refer to overbreeders, I'm talking about wealthy consumers over here who seem to pop out sprogs like nobody's business, so they can satisfy their egotistical goal of propagating their genes and dynasty building.

anon


as i said

27.01.2010 17:18

in the comment it was slightly off-topic, but, relevent due to the title of the article and the fact it was related to the politics of population.
I just mentioned OPT and their ilk, since its important to be aware of how these arguments have always been used throughout the past century. The amount of people this planet could support is vast although admitidly not infinate. Major shifts in society and production (food and otherwise) would have far more of an impact than somehow reducing the population by 2 billion or somehow preventing it from expanding.
In the vast majority of cases the more stable a country is the less people choose to have large famillies, countrys that have come out of extremel long periods of famine, war, poverty etc show decreasing birth rates and stable - decreasing total population without the foreign intervention that sometimes occured during the 20th century ( for example forced steralisations under the guise of family planning or foriegn medical aid).
Of all the miriad causes of todays problems population is one of the lowest on the list, one that is unlikely to require actual attention and one thats only so called solutions tend to involve oppression and control Those people with agenda's to do with 'racial purity' or fear of other cultures would have it placed at the top.

Therefore i find these issues important to bring up when they are mentioned.

Ether


err...

27.01.2010 21:25

The population explosion of the last 150 years or so has co-incided with the rise of industrial capitalism, the 'rationalisation' of economies, massive advances in technology and the exploitation of coal, oil and gas. I don't think that this is a coincindence somehow. The fact is that capitalism has created the economic conditions and impertus for the growth in population and in particular the growth of cities. Of course a socio-economic system that fundamentally requires an exponential economic growth rate is not sustainable, and in light of the FACT that the energy source that powers modern agriculture is reaching peak production and the FACT that that energy source cannot be replaced, to ignore population as a real problem is ignorant. And if anyone can think of a way to have an industrialised global economy without markets and capital, and without reproducing the attrocious results of central planning witnessed iin the last century then that would be a very interesting thought experiment, but I don't see a realistic alternative to capitalism if you want to retain all of the technology and industry that allows 6.5 to 9 billion people to exist (usually in material deprivation or alienation or both) on this planet. Authoritarian 'solutions' to this problem are no solution at all, but to blindly ignore all this and to attribute it to 'conservatives' and racists just betrays a sort of blind leftist dogmatism.

wtf


@wtf

28.01.2010 14:00

absolutely spot on, really well put, nice one.

for some reason, this point is all too often shouted down by people (usually self-proclaimed 'anticapitalists') who will not engage in a discussion about population.

scrumpy


Re: err...

28.01.2010 16:33

I agree capatalism is unsustainable, as is food production that requires so much fossil fuel and an industrial complex that is required by the economic system to continue to expand and produce more and more each year.

I haven't wanted to stifle debate, there have been no suggestions as to why the number of people could be anywhere near as important as the system they currently live under, 6 billion continuing under capitalism is going to cause more enviromental distruction, famine and war than 9 billion without it. Not to mention that the only way that has been demonstrated in history to slow/reverse population increases in a country is to *improve* day to day living conditions drasticly and for the long term. This is something that it does not suit capatalism to accommplish, it has spent decades doing the opposite and channeling wealth out of the hands of the poor into the hands of the rich powerful minority.

Lke you, I don't think central planning could ever be democratic or efficent, even when it doesnt end up controlled by a few corrupt people (as happened in every example i can think of from the 20th century).

It is because of the above that i believe the only answer lies in socio-economic systems that are not capitalist or authoratarian.

The only difference in our oppinion appears to be that you don't belive there are any realistic/possible alternatives to capatalist/authoratrian systems.

I'm thinking the questions: Is there an alternative? Could the various flavours of anarchism fucntion in the 21st century? would the zapitista model of organisation work on a large scale or in industrialised regions? Is a Parecon system possible to implement? Will anything other than the complete collapse of society (or a 50/60s style age of prosperity) galvanise people into action?
are going to take rather a long time to answer, and perhaps this is not the place for such debates.

I do think that if capatalism IS unsustatinable and a primary or major cause behind most of the worlds biggest problems AND any attempt to 'refrom' it has failed utterly that the only option is a more radical one.

Ether


Why has some editor put their own "addition" to this?

28.01.2010 18:31

I don't really think it's on that some Indymedia editor with an axe to grind has put their own "addition" to the post with their own views that completely contradict the original post. Aren't additions supposed to be additional facts that add to the article, not long waffly opinionated political rebuttals?

"In a world where we are repeatedly screwed over we are now being asked not to screw!"

You can screw all you want, just remember if we breed too much life ain't going to be too fun for your descendants, so use a condom or other method of birth control. Don't put your own ego ahead of future generations' well-being.

The pro-breeders here seem to think people concerned about population growth must be "liberal" or "pro-capitalist" or "anti-feminist" or baby-murderers or whatever. That is just a straw man argument. I'm as anarchist and anti-capitalist and pro-feminist and anti-baby-murdering as they come and I can see that it's obvious the planet can only hold a finite number of people (and animals) in comfort.

Capitalism is as ruthlessly exploitative as they come and eager to squeeze every last penny out of every square inch of land, so I'm not convinced that in an anarchist society (that I would love to live in) we would be able to feed even more people. I think the pro-breeding side comes from an old-school Marxist belief that technological fixes can solve everything.

Anyway, who wants to live in a grey world where every square inch is devoted to houses or agriculture? Fuck that, I'd rather breed less and have more wilderness.

anon


re: ether

29.01.2010 00:21

I was more responding to the article in the additions by 'liberals need to breed less'. I am not all that familiar with parecon, I only know that going to organisational meetings is a pain in the arse and a lot of extra work. Imagine having to do the business of plannign production and distribution by consensus descision making on top of your actual productive work. Do you think most people would be up for that? I can't see the extremely complex industrial economy being run by collective planning, it seems obvious to me that a complex economy requires markets to function effeciently or at all. I am not defending capitalism, I am just saying that the large population we currently have is basically the result of industrialisation, and that industrialisation and capitalism are inextricably linked. It seems clear to me that industrial civilisation itself is unsustainable, and population will be a MAJOR problem when it inevitably declines.

wtf


Soylent Green

29.01.2010 19:42

We will feed people...
with people!

.