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If we could get photosynthesis to run by moonlight, we would have a chance of supporting the “projected” increase in world population, which as we all know will continue to increase forever, no matter what. Wait, what? (Photo by Sammydavisdog/Flickr)
One of the many insanities of industrialism is the belief — so ingrained in the system that it is never even stated — that yields and profits can and should grow forever, increasing toward infinity on a finite planet. One reason the belief is never stated is that the statement is ridiculous on its face. So industrialists worship a kind of avatar they call “growth.” Somehow, the idea that growth is always good, that it can and should go on forever, does not induce hysterical laughter, but reverence. This testifies to the effectiveness of repetition as a substitute for reason.
When an organism never stops growing, reason calls it “cancer.” When an organism stops growing upon reaching maturity, reason says it has reached its peak. In nature, this is good and normal, as is the following eventual decline and death. In industrialism, peak is a dirty word, to be denied, preferably never even discussed, along with such alien concepts as decline and death.
Yet even the richest and most powerful humans cannot defy nature for long. She is implacable, and her ruling is that every system, every organism, every enterprise, matures — which is to say it reaches its peak — and then begins to die. This is true for everything from starfish to stars. So it’s time to be surprised all over again at a new study that shows that global industrial food production has, um, matured. As in, peaked.
The study, published in the journal Ecology and Society, investigated the notion that the concept of peak oil — the time when the development of a resource stops growing, plateaus, and then begins to decline — applies to other resources we need in order to to live. The results were stunning. Not only does the growth of all industrial exploitation of resources reach a maximum (followed by inevitable decline), but virtually all the resources that supply us with food have already done so.
Clarifying note: “Peak” something, as in oil, is commonly understood to be the point at which production levels off, the plateau preceding the decline. Here it is used somewhat differently, to mean the period of time in which the production of the resource was growing at its fastest rate. Therefore, in the years following the peak, the resource might still increase year-to-year, but by ever smaller amounts until decline sets in.
Thus when this study says the world reached peak corn in 1985, peak rice in 1988, peak milk and peak wheat in 2004, peak chicken in 2006 and peak soy in 2009, it means that since those years the production of the commodity has been growing more slowly, and is not keeping up with the demand curve of an ever-increasing population. Of the 21 commodities they studied, 16 reached peak production between 1988 and 2008, a breathtakingly short period of time. It suggests, rather than spot shortages and isolated crises, that the world’s food-production system is being overwhelmed.
There is ever increasing evidence that this is so. Yet we continue to see, everywhere, the feckless sentence: world population is expected to reach nine billion by 2050. Because growth goes on, no matter what. But to do that, food production would have to double. That of course would require more fertile land to till, more water for irrigation, more fuel for cultivation, more fertilizer…and all of those things have peaked. It would also bring more pollution, more topsoil loss, more toxicity and more genetic mutilation.
And so we sail on toward the place where constricted supplies meet a heedlessly growing population and the necessary corrections are made by famine and war. There’s another way to say that we refused to recognize the natural concept of reaching our peak: we never grew up.
In nature there are no rights! We humans are above nature, are”nt we.(until we are”nt).
Re:”world population is expected to reach nine billion by 2050. Because growth goes on, no matter what. But to do that, food production would have to double.”
Since world population is about 7 billion, how does going to 9 billion require food production to double? This does not compute.
Bill
Good catch. I am just delighted to know there are still people who think while reading. However, the world’s population is growing fastest in places such as China and India where people are changing to a more western diet including more meat, especially beef. Thus the amount of agricultural production needed to supply them would have to increase at a compound rate. For more detail, see “The World Hit Peak Chicken in 2008” in Smithsonian Magazine.
Tom, I agree with your premise. I do however, believe that there is still a way to feed 9 billion people by 2050: reduce the waste of food. By some accounts 30-50% of all food produced rots or is otherwise wasted before it reaches the table. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/10/half-world-food-waste
http://www.unric.org/en/food-waste/27133-one-third-of-all-food-wasted
//Since world population is about 7 billion, how does going to 9 billion require food production to double? This does not compute.//
It computes pretty well if one assumes that what’s in view here is actually the prospect of feeding the human population *adequately*. Taking the fact that there are currently around 1.5 billion people who live on the edge of starvation, coupled with the fact that if there were no growth in food production but a two-billion increase of human population, that means that by 2050 there would be some 3.5 billion living on the edge of starvation. If 9 billion people are going to be fed adequately, that means ramping up the nutrition intake of a very large number of hungry humans, and might well take twice the amount of food that’s currently being produced.
Great piece. Reminds me of the following quote by Francis Bacon “Nature to be commanded must be obeyed” We slapped nature in the face.
If citizens deny their own death which is both absolute and undisputed, then what chance is there when it comes to understanding the commonality of energy in all its forms and interacting complexities? The fact we live on a finite planet with finite resources is simply too complicated, too horrific, too challenging for most to accept, so we’re forced to march onwards in ignorance towards eventual oblivion.
Richard Feynman once said, “for a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature can not be fooled”
Elon Musk: “Natural human tendency is to suffer wishful thinking, sustainable energy is our single greatest challenge of the 21st century”
Bill Gates: “Energy is the thing that has allowed civilization the last 200 years to dramatically change everything”
Warren Buffet: “If you take oil, we’ve been sticking straws in the ground since 1850 and we have found a lot of the oil to be found, but if we use 85 million barrels per day and the rest of the world increases demand, we’re going to have a tough time maintaining production at reasonable prices. Oil is finite”
Clearly 2008 was the first warning shot across the bow of civilization that not only are we reaching peak food, but peak finance, peak “conventional” energy & peak climate, in effect, we’ve reached biospherical limits.
One could be forgiven for thinking we’re programmed to self-destruct. We blew through 2 billion years of accumulated energy reserves in less than 250 years and mortgaged the lives of 7.3 billion off the back of this bursting, bankrupted debt/carbon bubble.
Now it’s time to pay the Bank of Reality being forced to face the natural law of meta-physical justice.
2015 and beyond should see the acceleration of collapse.
One limit not mentioned is that of the infrastructure of industrialized civilization. Many cities are still growing in an unsustainable fashion as they use up the limited natural material resources, including those supplying energy as they age. People have become almost as dependent on the services provided by the infrastructure as they are on food and water. How will they cope without electricity or the fuel for transportation?
Tropospheric ozone is negatively impacting trees and vegetation causing significant and worsening world-wide crop loss:
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/p/basic-premise.html
Add to that the effects of climate change, soil depletion, and other pollution and it’s the ABILITY to grow food that becomes the problem – loss of habitat for plants means we’re on our way out.
I am among those who have been paying particular attention to watching Brazil commit suicide in slow motion. Not that the rest of us are acting any smarter it’s just that their troubles and non-responses are converging into a genuine perfect storm. I find it to be fascinating, horrifying and absurd. I cannot seem to look away.
Praying to the Gods for Rain
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2015/02/04/praying-to-the-gods-for-rain/comment-page-1/#comment-45790
Come on, everyone, don’t worry. There are still two things we have which are in very ample supply and which aren’t going to peak for a long, lo-o-o-ong time to come.
You know what these two things are?
Greed and stupidity.
The moon reflection is upside down. Just sayin’
A little known effect of climate change: moonbeam inverson.