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June-July,
1970
properly fertilized and given plenty of
water. Where will an undeveloped
country get fertilizer? They can build
fertilizer plants. But building fertilizer
plants requires capital.
If
they do not
build fertilizer plants they must buy fer–
tilizer overseas. That also requires capi–
tal. Once they have fertilizer it has to be
transported to the lields, in trucks or by
railroad. Trucks, railroads and farm–
roads also must be built or purchased
with capital. One thing poor, hungry,
and fast-growing countries particularly
lack is capital.
Agricultura! development involves
much more than new seeds. Suppose
you bring in the few agricultura! tech–
nicians available, take whatever fertil–
izer there is, take sorne of these high
yield grain seeds, find the most progres–
sive farmer in the area - one of the
people who will be willing to give up
his previous farming ideas and accept
the new ideas - and subsidize him so
he can put in more tube wells for water
to irrigate. He plants these grains, he
uses the fertilizer and, of course, he
learns how to use chlorinated hydro–
carbon pesticides to kili the pests. And
he gets a very fine yield.
What happens then? Prices drop in
that area, because starving people
unfortunately often do not generate
demand. They have no money to buy
the food they need. The grain must be
transported to where there is a market
for it. That requires roads.
It all boils clown to the complex
problem of overall
development!
Getting high yields the fust year or
so from new varietíes is not an agricul–
tura! revolution. It is necessary to have
the fertilizer, the water, the agricultura!
technicians, the transport systems, and
to convince the farmers who were not
progressíve enough to use the grains
during the fust year. These are the
eco–
nomic
problems.
What about the biologícal problems ?
When high-yíeld grains are developed,
it is done by a process of selection. In
other words, every generation the plant
breeder plants seeds from the plants
that produced the highest yield and
each generation produces more and
more yield. Now in this kiod of game
in
biology no one gets something for
nothing. When hígh yield is obtained,
THE POPULATION
BOMB EXPLODES
present growth rotes, world population is
certain to reach 7 billion by 2000. No one can
predict what course world food production will
take, but most likely it will grow
arithmetically
(2, 3,
4, 5,
6), while population grows
geomet–
rically
(2, 4, 8, 16, 32) as shown here. Based
on recorded U. N. data for declining food pro–
duction, 1950-1966, the world would reoch a
"starvation level" of 2000 caloríes per person
per day in the underdeveloped nations in the
1
late 1970's! Weather, disease, and soil dep!e–
tion could alter that time scale a few years