Feeding the World: A Challenge for
the Twenty-First Century by Vaclav
Smil
Reality Check
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, Smils ideas are just
unglamorous enough to fall by the wayside. Why not take the easy way
out and decide either that were 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 wont 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 Smils 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
Personal Review: Feeding the World: A Challenge for the
Twenty-First Century by Vaclav Smil
The debate over feeding a growing world population seems like an ink blot
test - you "see" your paradigm (prejudices, world view) and feel strongly,
usually without a lot of data.This seems true of environmentalists as well
as free market enthusiasts.Vaclav Smil recaps the debate, including Paul
Ehrlich's famous vasectomy and - so far always wildly inaccurate -
prophesies of massive starvation, and the equally enthusiastic faith of free
marketers that technology and free markets will _always_ and _forever_
keep right on booming.Then he adds a reality check, going over the data
and the science in loving detail.Smil has spent many years in the field -
and in paddies ;-) - all over the world, so his summary for general readers
recaps his own cutting-edge scholarly books as well as scholarship
generally. Freeman Dyson was deeply impressed by Smil's general work
on bioenergetics, the physics of ecology - Smil is the rare bird who can do
first-rate research _and_ explain it without talking-down, grinding an ax or
equations (he does have a flow diagram for biospheric nitrogen that is truly
elegant, as well as charts and graphs that _work_ without bogging you
down). While he concludes it is just possible to feed the projected world
population over the next century, the fascination is in the details he
presents elegantly.For instance - the loving movement for more work
horses on farms. I love morgans, but some even love mules ;-)All
agricultural uses consume about 1% of North American liquid fuels, but
feeding the horses needed to replace internal combustion would require
250% of current land devoted to agriculture. Smil is too delicate to ask
what we'd do with all that horse manure - in the 1850s, New York City had
a small industry devoted to sweeping it up and shipping it to Connecticut's
"gold coast" to grow onions.Nitrogen fertilizers are perhaps the critical
input, and perhaps one third of us today could not be fed without artificial
nitrates (Smil has a book _Transforming the World_ just on this topic).He is
equally powerful, point by point, on just how China went from starving en
masse with Mao to current surpluses, what we know and do not know
about soil erosion, and each of the limiting factors in crop varieties
(cultivars, if you like good words). He does not seem to over-emphasize,
but if genetic re-engineering of crops ever gets beyond resistance to pests,
the underlying efficiencies of photosynthesis plus organic fixation of
nitrogen _conceivably_ might allow some wildly more efficient
"Frankenfoods", a sort of "monster mash" using C4 photosynthesis as the
basis.If Smil takes sides in the clash of worldviews, he successfully

presents it in terms of in-put efficiencies. E.g., will we really starve
because we will run out of farmland, because artificial fertilizers will run
short or kill-off the micro-life that make soils live.I found one sentence
bemoaning the "collapse" of petroleum prices, which cut short "drilling for
oil" by improving energy efficiency. This is where engineering efficiency
loses touch with most of us. Gasoline cheaper than bottled water is good
for most of us, bad for OPEC, and state interventions to artificially impose
the cost signals from $40/barrel petroleum would be hugely costly even
before you count pure waste.Consider Al Gore's "carbon tax" which
immediately gave coal an exemption - because coal is so clean, or maybe
to pay-off the UMW and Senator Byrd. Britain passed a carbon tax, but
somehow imposed a double helping on state-owned _nuclear_ power
plants that generate zero "green house" gases, again because coal
production has political clout that completely offsets any environmental
arguments.But Smil's strength is _precisely_ his ability to focus on the
data, on the science. Economics and politics, let alone worldviews that
mimic theology, show up only as consequences of the biophysics.
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