One of the major limiting factors of population size is food. Although his predictions of impending doom have so far proven wrong, Paul Ehrlich is right that if human population outstrips food production, the result would be a disaster. The question becomes, how likely is that disaster to occur? Not likely according to John Bongaarts.
Bongaarts is the author of “Population Pressure and Food Supply,” published in the September 1996 issue of Population and Development Review. Bongaarts analyzes trends in world food production from 1962 to 1989 using Food and Agricultural Organization data.
After a lengthy analysis of the any facets of the change in food production over that period and reasonable expectations about future changes in food production, Bongaarts concludes,
Although any projection to the middle of the next century must be regarded as speculative, on the whole the above illustrative scenario for 2050 appears achievable. Recent short-term projections to 2010 or 2020 based on econometric models by the World Bank (Mitchell and Ingco 1995), FAO (Alexandratos 1995), and the International Food Policy Research Institute (Agcaoili and Rosegrant 1995) also foresee no major obstacles to continued expansion of the food supply. It is therefore likely that serious and persistent global food shortages can be avoided, provided governments vigorously pursue efforts to improve economic policies and facilitate the dissemination of new technology and investment in research and human resource (Bongaarts 499).