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something must be given up. One of the
things that's usually given up is protein
content. Since protein malnutrition is
probably the most serious food problem
in the world, the high-yield grains may
be no solution at all from that point
of view. Another problem
is
that pests
just love the closely packed stalks and
fibers of the Filipino rice (thc new IRS
rices) . Pest problems have already
begun to develop.
Here is the usual cycle of pest con–
trol; it has been repeated time and again
in the world. The .lirst year crops are
coated with pesticides and the pests dis–
appear. At the same time, although the
farmer doesn't notice it, the little aea–
tures that eat the pests also disappear.
They are killed off entirely. They have
very smaJl populations to begin with.
The second year there are a few more
pests around - the offspring of those
few that were rcsistant to thc pesticide.
The next year there are a few more.
Usually it takes about five years
before the pests are back where they
started. At this point, they are utterly
resistant to thc pesticide. But the situa–
tion is worse than before, because the
natural controls are no longer around.
This has happened time and time and
time again. Therefore, the fact that
there are very high crop yields at first,
when new high-yield grains are intro–
duced, is exactly what evcrybody pre–
dicted. But it is ridiculous on biological
grounds to assume that the yields will
remain that high.
1
am not against trying to increase
yields
in
tropical areas. This is ccrtainly
one of those things that we should
be
doing. But our efforts until now are a
drop in the bucket. We should have bil–
lions of dollars going into training the
agricultura! technicians, devcloping tbe
farro roads, educating people how to
control pests without destroying them–
selves, and so on. The grain seeds alone
are not a revolution.
" Food From the Seas"?
What about the immense riches of
the sea? The dcep sea, roughly
90%
of
the arca of the ocean, produces nothing
in the way of fisb - less than one per–
cent of the world's fish catch comes
from the deep sea.
Immense riches of the deep sea, as far
The
PLAIN TRUTH
as mankind is concerned, are simply
non-existent. Virtually 100 percent of
our fisheries' yield is from the 10% of
the sea that is along the shores, with
rare exceptions. There are a few spots
further out that happeo to be rich with
nutrients for one reason or another. But
fo r the most part we depeod on yield
from the water close to shore.
We are getting from the sea, oow,
about sixty miJlion metric tons a year.
Ten million tons of it (one sixth)
comes from the Peruvian anchovy fish–
ery alone. Marine biologists estímate
that, if we did everything right, we
could get from the sea a sustaioable
yield of a hundred million metric tons.
That means, if we do everything right
and if the population contioues to grow
at its present rate, tbere will still
be
a
continua! per capi ta
deditte
in the food
we get from the sea.
But far from doing everything right,
we
are
over-exploiting the stocks aod
simultaneously polluting the sea. Even
if we stopped over-exploiting the fish–
eries and stopped the pollution, we
would probably get less food out of the
sea over the next few decades than we
are getting now. It will take time for
the stocks to recover and for the effects
of pollution to wear off. But we are oot
yet moving toward ei ther goal.
What
Is
the Solution ?
First of all, the attitude that over–
populatioo is a problem of hungry
people in the rest of the world and not
a problem for Americans is sheer rub–
bish. The birth of every American baby
in the míddle class is at least 25 times
and, by many standards, 50 times the
disaster for the world as the birth of an
Indian baby or a ghetto child. Why?
Because we, the affluent people in the
United States, the Soviet Union, and
Western Europe, are tbe
J¡rper-poiJIItors
and the
mper-coummers
of the planet.
The United States alone plans to use
aiJ thet·e is
of several non-renewable
resources before the early part of the
next century is gone. We are six percent
of the world's people but our annual
consumption now is about 35% of all
the raw materials consumed on the face
of the eartb.
But we are not only consuming at a
disgusting rate, we are also coating the
Jun e-J uly, 1970
earth with pesticides. We know much
better ways of controlling pests than are
now used. The only ones who benefit
in the short and long run, in the pest
control business today, with rare excep–
tions, are the petro-chemical industries.
It's a losiog game for the farmers, and
it's a losing game for us.
The U. S. is badly over-developed. As
many economists have pointed out, we
must do something about it . We must
shift from a "cowboy economy" to a
"spaceman economy." We must start
recycl ing our resources, not dispersing
them. We could very dramatically
reduce our use
o{
the world's resources,
if we tried.
We also must dramatically reduce the
size of our population. One of my Stan–
ford colleagues asked the following
c¡uestíon : "How many people could the
world support if everybody lived tbe
life of the average American, ignoring
the problems of envi ronmental deterio–
ration and resource depletion ?" The
answer: less than a billion!
If
we are going to save the world, we
must start at home. We must stop
breeding ourselves off this planet.
Population control will rec¡uire a lot
of effort. We must not ooly control
population size, but help, in every pos–
sible way, underdeveloped natioos to
achieve agricultura! development. Every–
body in the world, hopefully, will
be
able to have ao adequate díet, adec¡uate
housing and a reasonable c¡uality of life.
1
know that these are utopian plans. I
think the most ironic thing about the
world situation today is that the time
has fioally come when the
onJy
realistic
solutions are the kind that we used to
say were unrealistic or utopian !
People often ask me whether l'm an
optimist or a pessimist. And my aoswer
is rather simple! We are in deep
trouble.
I tend to
be
very optimistic that we
could
do a lot. But l'm very pessimistic
about whether we will. People still have
the attitude that we can stand arouod
on a boat and tell another passenger,
"Your end of the boat is sinking."
It
really rests oo all of us.
If
you say,
"lt
sounds terrible, but it can't
be
that
bad - life is still full of fun in the sun
- there can't real ly
be
any problems"
- then we'll have had ít.
O