Forget oil – the price of wheat has soared by 130% in the past year, prompting world leaders to fly to Rome for a spot of dinner and lively banter. After three days of Italian hospitality, delegates from 181 countries approved a declaration to step up investment in agriculture, coupled with a warning from Ban Ki-moon that global agricultural production must increase 50% by 2030 to support our expanding (and increasingly meat-craving) population.

Perhaps naively, the conference believes this increase is possible despite existing strains on resources. Just how many people (Americans? Armenians?) can the world support, and are increasingly materialistic lifestyle expectations sustainable? In short, what is our ‘carrying capacity’ – if there is one? Opinions are more divided today than two decades ago, never mind two centuries.

Just how many people (Americans? Armenians?) can the world support?

Thomas Malthus was the first to challenge the pursuit of indefinite economic growth during the Enlightenment. Founding post-modernism before there was even a modernism, his depressing seminal work, The Principle of Population (1798), described the ecological mechanism behind poverty and misery, with simple but devastating logic:

– Unrestricted, populations grow exponentially (1, 2, 4, 8, 16…). However,
– Agricultural production grows arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4, 5…) and is limited by a finite amount of arable land.

Malthus said that without ‘moral restraint’ on birth rates, this results in population growth outpacing its food base, creating poverty and causing famine, war and disease to bring numbers in line with resources.

‘If AIDS didn’t exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent one’

A radical pamphlet of its time, Malthus’ essay was in reaction to his optimistic contemporaries, the Cornucopians, who believed technology would allow continued progress and unhampered economic growth. This viewpoint is shared today by the Promethean movement, who argue that Malthus’ dystopian vision has been proven wrong by the Industrial and Green Revolutions, birth control methods, female empowerment, and education.

So after two hundred years, have we finally buried Malthus? To an extent. Thus far, Malthusian predictions of oil stocks and population limits have been foiled by technology, and a third of the world’s population happily benefits from developments that brought falling birth rates and increased agricultural productivity per capita. Yet the majority of the world still suffers the misery of Malthusian checks: famine, war, and disease.

Particularly extreme biocentrics have even gone as far as to say that the AIDS epidemic is a necessary corrective for curbing population, and – as Plague weakened feudalism – could end industrialism, the main force behind the environmental crisis. ‘If AIDS didn’t exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent one’ (Miss Ann Thropy, Earth First!, 1987). How nice…

Wait, there’s more. Garrett Hardin argued against giving aid to the poor, using a metaphor of the Earth as a near full lifeboat with limited supplies surrounded by hundreds of swimmers – the developing world. On utilitarian principle, swimmers should not be rescued as it leaves no emergency resources (a ‘safety factor’), or risks capsizing the lifeboat. But Paehlke argues that the heaviest consumers of resources – the rich world – would do better for the ‘greater good’ by jumping out of the lifeboat and allowing more swimmers to live. This is the root conflict between the environmental perspectives of developed and developing countries: dividing up resources fairly, without wiping life out in the process. Add this to the usual political bickering and reconciliation seems unlikely.

Even within the neighbourly EU, reform of the much-loathed CAP is moving at a glacial pace.

One thing the Rome conference did recognise is that matters are worsened when protectionist trade regulations distort the market. Not that the invisible hand is as incontrovertible as free-market zealots hold, but the resulting levels of environmental degradation and surplus food wasted is criminal. Even within the neighbourly EU, reform of the much-loathed CAP is moving at a glacial pace. Things are less clear-cut when developing countries claim protectionism for their nascent industries and small-time farmers in the global market. Are these justified on social grounds?

The practical and moral dilemmas are complex and it would have been too much for delegates in Rome to set out anything more than predictably watered-down but well-meaning promises. Worse, however, were the deftly shirked responsibilities, especially on bio-fuels, Hungry to sample more Mediterranean cuisine, a follow-up is likely in Spain this autumn, courtesy of Mr Zapatero. Let us hope the politicians can be as productive as they expect their farmers to be.

Further reading:

Malthus, T.R. (1798) An Essay on the Principle of Population – The original tome.

Brown, L.R., Gardner, G., and Halweil B. (1999) Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge – Über-Malthusianism for the modern day. Do not read if you are of a nervous disposition.

Coleman, N. (2007) Malthus was Right – Mathematician suggesting we colonise the Galaxy…or something.