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Re: China and Food (was Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy)



jmc@Steam.stanford.edu (John McCarthy) wrote:

>Indeed the FAO Web page www.fao.org has figures on the number of
>malnourished in the world.  If I read the graphs correctly (for each
>of 6 regions) and added correctly, we have
>
>1969-71			885 million
>1991-92			730 million
>2010 (predicted)	655 million

And if you  include the figures I stated  it looks like this:

1969-71     885 million
1989           550 million
1991-92    730 million
1996           840 million

Note that the figures for 69-71 were before the last international
food conference in '74, at which time mass famine was being faced in
many areas. This resulted in substantial efforts by the world
community and hence 'the green revolution'. These efforts didn't last,
and my original point that things have been getting worse for the past
decade or so stands.

As far as the predicted numbers are concerned, the FAO has set a goal
of reducing the number by a _minimum_ of 50% by 2015. The baseline
they will use for that goal is the current estimate of 840 million.
Let us hope that it happens.

>Different papers at the Rome conference have given figures differing
>by a few tens of millions.  This is natural for such an imprecise
>concept.  East Asia is the big winner, and Subsaharan Africa is the
>big loser.

Only about 1/3 of those facing famine are in Africa, most of the rest
are in South and Southeast Asia. Africa is considered to be more of a
problem because the population is still doubling with each generation.


Jason McGinnis


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