Ever since Thomas Malthus in the 18th century, generations of doom-addicted Jeremiahs have been firmly convinced that we’re just years away from mass starvation. Using the most simplistic maths, these screeching doomsayers preach that imminent overpopulation is gonna roon us all. The anti-human movement got another boost in the 1960s with Paul Ehrlich’s ridiculous The Population Bomb. The (pseudo) intellectual grandchild of Malthus and Ehrlich is odious Swedish doom-goblin Greta Thunberg.
It matters not one whit to their legions of followers that these miserablists have been utterly wrong, every single time. Like the cultists they are, they simply ignore every failed prediction (i.e., all of them) and swear that next time they’ll be right.
Spoiler alert: just like socialism, it won’t be right ‘next time’.
Because the one thing they utterly fail to comprehend is human ingenuity and the endless ability of people who can, to do. At the very time that Ehrlich was preaching unavoidable mass starvation in even the United States in the 1980s, competent geniuses like Norman Borlaug were setting about saving billions of lives. Borlaug’s genius was engineering new, hybrid, strains of corn with exponentially greater yields.
Such ingenuity, and other innovations in the much-derided ‘industrial farming’, is what has kept global food production ever-increasing (while using less land), even as the human population has exploded. Not least by feeding billions of domesticated animals.
Over 95 per cent of animal feed for US livestock – such as cattle, hogs, and poultry – comes from corn, which makes up roughly 40 per cent of all corn used domestically. Despite this abundance, the Davos crowd would have us believe that our survival hinges on swapping steaks and burgers for worms and insects. Under the banner of “sustainability,” they propose shuttering our Texas Roadhouses, Dickey’s Barbecue Pits, and Chick-fil-As to make way for bug burgers. But are we really running out of beef, chicken, and pork?
Hardly. Corn is a foundational feed for producing those delicious meats. In the 1930s, US corn yields averaged 26 bushels per acre. Today, that number is 179.3 bushels per acre –with top-performing farms reaching an astonishing 624 bushels. That’s a 589.6 per cent increase in yield over 88 years. One acre today produces as much corn as nearly 6.89 acres did in 1936, freeing up 5.89 acres for other uses – from conservation to recreation. Yields continue to rise at about 1.75 bushels per year, doubling every 31.6 years thanks to a 2.21 per cent annual growth rate.
But, but… population increase! In fact, every one per cent increase in US population has been outpaced nearly four times by increase in corn abundance. At the same time, the land needed to produce that cornucopia (pun intended) has been reduced by 61 per cent. The ‘time price’, or the amount of time it takes to earn the money to buy a good, has fallen, per bushel, by 91 per cent for even unskilled workers.
We’re growing smarter much faster than we’re growing people.
Ehrlich was famously bested by economist Julian Simon, in a bet over whether the price of five key metals (chosen by Ehrlich) would rise or fall over the next decade. They fell, Simon won.
If Ehrlich wants to put his money where his mouth is again, MIT scientist Andrew McAfee has another bet on offer. McAfee is betting $100,000 that, by 2029, the US will produce more crops than in 2019 while using less land, fertiliser and irrigation.
Over to you, ‘eat ze bugs’ zealots. C’mon Greta, your family are multi-millionaires: let’s see the courage of your convictions.
