Lately, global scientists have been addressing the issue of whether the world will be able to produce enough food without eradicating the environment – as agriculture is and has been destroying the environment tremendously.
The reasons are: Farmland and grazing land cover 40% of the earth and consume our resources heavily. Farming emits about 1/3 of all greenhouse gases caused by humans and exploits almost 3/4 of water that humans use.
Furthermore, a new study from the University of Minnesota extrapolates that food demand will double within the next 4 decades. The study suggests that in order to avoid food shortages huge investments could be made in countries where agriculture isn’t very efficient yet; water and fertilizers would need to be used more consciously; less food should be wasted, and less meat should be consumed – it is estimated that 40% of produce grown is fed to animals.
Unfortunately, as we don’t have an overall political mechanism to enforce or ‘dictate’ these necessities, the free global market has to do its best to regulate this imperative process of change. The market’s regulating mechanism is the price – i.e. price of land, seeds, and livestock – and that again determines the plans of farmers, according to economist Thomas Hertel from Purdue University.
Markets respond to scarcity in the following way:
Prices rise, farming becomes more profitable, inducing farmers to cultivate more food, ideally…
Prices rise, farming becomes more profitable, inducing farmers to cultivate more food, ideally…
But what could also happen is that food could get so expensive that consumption could go down. That only time will show.
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