Hand in hand with Raj's observations is the same discussion about water. The charity Water.org and Unicef report 884 million people lack access to safe water supplies; approximately one in eight people.

Agriculture of any scale requires water, too along with the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

A look at a world map shows the borders of many nations are divided along waterways, and access to that water will be contentious as the demands of the future grow.

The population increase can be slowed down by moving most people into big cities. It will be easier to take care of the growing population and, as studies have shown, keep the earth cleaner, protect nature, increase the growth of plants and trees. In the cities is better medical care, more children go to school, families will be smaller - bringing up children there is more expensive. But women will be more aware of available birth control, plus will become part of the work force. Big cities, better health and education, reduced population growth!

Agroecology is the obvious way to go if the policy priority is nutritional autarchy, ecological sustainability and regional stability – and thereby U.S. strategic security, long-term. It promises to be expensive, messy and unrewarding, short-term.

If the priority is short-term gain for Western oligarchs – other priorities be damned – then dispossessing small freeholders, consigning them to megalopolis slums no better than concentration camps, and incorporating (literally and figuratively) their land into agro-combine collectives sounds much cheaper and more rewarding. Sterilizing the soil with massive infusions of fertilizer (and pesticides and frankencrops) is a distant, second best -- and absolutely unsustainable: fertilizer = gasoline. Who will the principal beneficiaries turn out to be? In reverse order, those who profited most from ecocide, those who profited most from industrial slavery and its legalistic replacements, or the rest of us?

If long-term American security favors global stability over short-term profit, who is going to deliver the bad news to the deep pockets? If not, how long are the rest of us (on both sides of the African/American divide) going to tolerate an unsustainable and strategically perilous status-quo ?

. . . Is it possible that some areas of Malawi might actually benefit from some level of industrialized agriculture? I'm thinking, specifically, of areas where the supply of strong adults have been decimated by AIDS and/or migration to the cities. Teaching the remaining populace to operate and maintain agricultural machinery and irrigation systems may be one of the few ways of helping them feed themselves.

That said, sustainable irrigation and fertilizer practices are a must--regardless of the school of agriculture employed.

Hungry or food insecure people can double their numbers in a generation. They don't always do this- the values and culture of their society must encourage pro-natalism and, in the case of, catastrophic Malthusian shocks exogenous Institutional help can also make a difference.
We are all descended from hungry people who were very good at doubling their numbers. Yet not all of us reading this are 'food insecure' and many of us, for the last couple of generations, haven't been particularly good at demographic expansion.
Why?
Well, we or our parents or grandparents or more distant ancestors moved away from places where hunger was endemic and made their homes where it was less so.
This much is obvious, but it is this obvious point that escapes the author of this article. Which begs the question, what actually is the argument that Raj Patel is making here? Well, he's talking about feeding the hungry which is a good thing and how apparently every approach hitherto got it terribly wrong and something exciting and new is happening in Malawi and there's some new concept called agro-ecology which is what the cool kids are into but like you squares won't ever really get it but anyway this is a really important article for everybody to read.

Re-reading the article, however, the only salient point that emerges is that Raj Patel, like all other holier-than-thou pi jaw artistes, is incapable of making a reasoned argument.

Take the first point he makes- 'Today, humanity produces enough food to feed everyone but, because of the way we distribute it, there are still a billion hungry.'
Is he unaware that people can move and be moved just as easily, no more easily, than food? What's more, when people move from places where they haven't enough to eat but keep making babies anyway, to places where food is available, education is available, jobs are available, social norms permit contraception and small families, then a SUSTAINABLE solution to the problem of hunger is reached.

Raj Patel tells us that what is happening in Malawi is important to feeding the hungry. He does not mention that the population of Malawi doubled in 24 years between 1979 and 2003- that's even after taking a hit from the AIDS epidemic. Clearly, if Malawi's people continue to mainly rely on agriculture, then its population will in fact rise to the 132 million level that Raj Patel mentions by the end of the century. No doubt, this happy outcome will be utterly out of reach if that evil economist Paul Collier gets his way and Malawi goes in for big agri-business with peasant proprietors having to work in food processing, manufacturing, services and so on.

That would be really terrible. They'd have to send their kids to school where they'd be looked after and have better nutrition with free school milk and meals and so on. Raj Patel tells us that when women have to go to the fields to cultivate the land, their children are at risk of neglect and malnutrition. In other words, to solve hunger you don't just have to give fertilizers and other inputs to small peasant proprietors but also provide an au pair to look after their kids and a home tutor and, because of the lack of refrigerators in rural areas, a guy to blow upon food items to keep them cool and prevent spoilage and so on.
The alternative is for people to quit agriculture to work in towns and cities. But that's what Paul Collier suggested and, for some reason, Paul Collier is a very evil man. Patel tells us Collier has contempt for peasants, but, Patel is at pains to reassure us, Collier's contempt rest upon something other than the facts. I'm beginning to hate this Collier guy. Why does he have so much contempt for the peasants? If it is based on 'something other than the facts'- it just makes him that much more despicable. Shame on you, Collier! Kindly stop being contemptuous of peasants. Next time you feel like doing it, take a cold shower or something. Just say no.

Malawi- which is smaller than Pensyllania but , over the last decade, has outstripped it in terms of population- must not listen to Collier. Otherwise they might become like Pensylvania- which is part of the U.S.A- a country which has fifty million 'food insecure' people which is more than triple the population of Malawi!

When oh when oh when will people living prosperous lives in the Cities and technologically advanced countries realize that their apparent wealth is actually poverty? There are literally billions of people in the West who are going to bed either hungry or too tired to do the washing up.

Half the world will go hungry, half will go on with their lives without caring, and bloggers will continue to write articles about it.

Excuse me; is population increases in Africa NOT evidence that they are gaining the capacity to feed more and more people? If they couldn't, their population wouldn't increase, would it?

Africa actually has the POTENTIAL to be a substantial net exporter of food if they sorted their culture and politics out.

First world countries actually need to STOP subsidising and producing agricultural surpluses that depress world food prices. By the way, the "terms of trade" for food and agriculture have been on a strong NEGATIVE trend for decades, even if there is the odd blip upwards. This is hardly a sign of a TREND to "running out of food", quite the opposite. In fact, the population increase we are discussing is an encouraging CONSEQUENCE of increased food production, NOT a NEW PROBLEM that we need to decide how to cope with.

Feeding 10 billion people is possible if governments start promoting agriculture, use less wasteful processes, make stringent laws to stop using agricultural land for other purposes, and making legislations to enforce these..

The issue is that people are starving even now, and let alone consider when world population reaching 10 billion...

The current development phenomenon taking place in the electronic frontier with technologies like electronic voice phenomena and all must be brought to the filed of agriculture too. Change is needed. evp is needed.

A look at a world map shows the borders of many nations are divided along waterways, and access to that water James will be contentious as the demands of the future grow.

The population increase can be slowed down by moving most people into big cities. It will be easier to take care of the growing population and, as studies have shown, keep the earth cleaner, protect nature, increase the growth of plants and trees. In the cities is better medical care, more children go to school, families will be smaller - bringing up children there is more expensive. mesothelioma But women will be more aware of available birth control, plus will become part of the work force. Big cities, better health and education, reduced population growth!

This is true: First world countries actually need to STOP subsidising and producing agricultural surpluses that depress world food prices. By the way, the "terms of trade" for food and agriculture have been on a strong NEGATIVE trend for decades, even if there is the odd blip upwards. This is hardly a sign of a trend to "running out of food", quite the opposite. In fact, the population increase we are discussing is an encouraging consequence of increased food production, not a new problem that we need to decide how to cope with. medical malpractice If long-term American security favors global stability over short-term profit, who is going to deliver the bad news to the deep pockets? If not, how long are the rest of us (on both sides of the African/American divide) going to tolerate an unsustainable and strategically perilous status-quo ?