How much land can ten billion people spare for nature?

Daedalus

Volumn 125, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 73-93

  Waggoner, Paul E ^a  

^a The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0344875781     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. This article briefly answers the question in the title. An ample answer with full citation of its foundation has been published as Task Force Report no. 121 by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST), Ames, Iowa, 1994. Fallout into the environment is more fully examined in Paul E. Waggoner, "How Much More Land Can American Farmers Spare?" in Burton C. English, Richard L. White, and Liu-Hsiung Chuang, eds., RCA III Symposium on Crop and Livestock Technologies: Proceedings (Washington, D.C.: National Resource Conservation Service, US Department of Agriculture, forthcoming).
2. Wolfgang Lutz, The Future Population of the Earth: What Can We Assume Today? (London: Earthscan, 1994).
3. See also Robert W. Kates, "Population, Technology, and the Human Environment: A Thread Through Time," Dœdalus 125 (3) (Summer 1996).
4. Bryan Norton, "Commodity, Amenity, and Morality: The Limits of Quantification in Valuing Biodiversity," in E. O. Wilson, ed., Biodiversity (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1988), 200-205.
5. See Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich, "Humans in Nature: Toward a Physiocentric Philosophy," Dœdalus 125 (3) (Summer 1996).
6. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO Yearbook 1991, vol. 45 (Rome: FAO, 1992);
7. National Research Council, Subcommittee on the Tenth Edition of the RDAs, Recommended Dietary Allowances, 10th rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1989), 33, 285.
8. C. Hassebrook and G. Hegyes, Choices for the Heartland (Walthill, Nebr.: Center for Rural Affairs, 1989);
9. US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Statistics (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1962), 537.
10. Calculated at 2.6 times the weight of feed, containing 4,000 cal/kg, to produce 1 times the weight of meat, containing 2,200 cal/kg. Feed per meat from US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Statistics (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1992).
11. Kirit S. Parikh, "Agricultural and Food System Scenarios for the 21st Century," in Vernon W. Ruttan, ed., Agriculture, Environment and Health: Toward Sustainable Development in the 21st Century (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1992);
12. Fred H. Sanderson, "The Agro-Food Filiere: A Macroeconomic Study on the Evolution of the Demand Structure and Induced Changes in the Destination of Agricultural Outputs," in G. Antonelli and A. Quadrio-Curzio, eds., The Agro-Technological System Towards 2000 (North Holland: Elsevier Science Publishers, 1988).
13. Ray Kroc, Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's (Chicago, Ill.: Henry Regnery Co., 1977).
14. See also US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Statistics (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, various years). The book for 1972 tabulates the annual diet from 1909 to 1970.
15. "The staggering conclusion. . .is that 1,000 billion people could live from the earth if photosynthesis is the limiting factor!" Cornelius T. deWit, "Photosynthesis: Its Relationship to Overpopulation," in Anthony San Pietro, Frances A. Greer, and Thomas J. Army, eds., Harvesting the Sun (New York: Academic Press, 1967), 315-320.
16. Fallen fertilizer prices are reported, e.g., in Freeport-McMoRan, 1992 Annual Report (New Orleans: Freeport-McMoRan, 1993).
17. Photosynthesizing 1 to 6 grams of biomass consumes a thousand grams of water. At this ratio, the global evaporation from land matches photosynthesis to feed 400 billion. For details see Paul E. Waggoner, "How Much Land Can Ten Billion People Spare for Nature?," Task Force Report, no. 121 (Ames, Iowa: Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, 1994).
18. John F. Richards, "Land Transformation," in B. L. Turner et al., eds., The Earth as Transformed by Human Action (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 164;
19. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO Yearbook 1991, vol. 45 (Rome: FAO, 1992), 237.
20. National Corn Growers' Association, Tabulations of the Contestants in the 1992 and 1993 Maize Yield Contest (St. Louis, Mo.: National Corn Growers' Association, 1993 and 1994).
21. Donald L. Plucknett and Nigel J. H. Smith, "Sustaining Agricultural Yields: As Productivity Rises, Maintenance Research is Needed to Uphold the Gains," BioScience 36 (1986): 40-45.
22. US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, A New Technological Era for American Agriculture, OTA-F-474 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Technology Assessment, 1992), 133-138;
23. C. Weiss and S. E. Brayman, "Assessment of Biotechnology: The 'Gene' Revolution," in Biotechnology and Development: Expanding the Capacity to Produce Food (New York: United Nations, 1992), 1-7.
24. Iowa Crop Improvement Association, Ames, Iowa, personal communication. See also Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO Yearbook (Rome: FAO, various years);
25. and US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Statistics (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, various years).
26. M. Ahmad, "Water as a Constraint to World Food Supplies," in Wayne R. Jordan, ed., Water and Water Policy in World Food Supplies (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 1987), 23-27.
27. Expenditures and budgets for 1972-1994 furnished by Ralph Cummings Jr., US AID and adjusted to 1983 dollars by the US consumer price index. See also Philip H. Abelson, "International Agriculture," Science 268 (1995): 11.
28. Theodore W. Schultz, Transforming Traditional Agriculture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964).
29. Romeo M. Bautista and Alberto Valdes, eds., The Bias Against Agriculture (San Francisco, Calif.: Contemporary Studies Press, 1993).
30. Yujiro Hayami and Vernon W. Ruttan, Agricultural Development (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985).
31. For past food prices see Hans P. Binswanger, Yair Mundlak, M.-C. Yang, and A. Bowers, Estimation of Aggregate Agricultural Response, Agricultural Research Unit Report 48 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1985).
32. The analysis, which W. D. Nordhaus devised, is reported fully in Paul E. Waggoner, "How Much Land Can Ten Billion People Spare for Nature?," Task Force Report, no. 121 (Ames, Iowa: Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, 1994).
33. Sandra Postel, Last Oasis (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1992).
34. Ahmad, "Water as a Constraint to World Food Supplies."
35. M. E. Jensen, "Water Resource Technology and Management," in B. C. Barton, J. A. Maetzold, B. R. Holding, and E. O. Heady, eds., Future Agricultural Technology and Resource Conservation (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1984), 142-166.
36. The annunciation of the principle of a factor only raising yield when other factors are not limiting coincides with the origins of plant physiology and agronomy. Recently, it has been related to the environmental effects of intensive farming, as in Cornelius T. deWit, "Resource Use in Agriculture," Agricultural Systems 40 (1992): 125-151.
37. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO Yearbook 1991, vol. 45 (Rome: FAO, 1992), 3, 237.
38. The Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) tabulated the area planted to fifteen principal crops in the United States and the area idled by two programs identified by the acronyms ARP/PLD/0-92 and CRP. The idled areas have been, or are projected to be, steady from 1989 to 1997, but FAPRI projects them to decline after 1997. Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute, 1992 US Agricultural Outlook, Staff Report 1-92 (Ames, Iowa, and Columbia, Mo.: FAPRI, 1992), 83.
39. Anne Matthews, Where the Buffalo Roam (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1992).
40. Rudy Rabbinge et al., Ground for Choices. Reports to the Government, vol. 42 (The Hague: Netherlands Science Council for Government Policy, 1992).
41. P. Sanchez, D. E. Bandy, J. H. Villachica, and J. J. Nicholaides, "Amazon Basin Soils: Management for Continuous Crop Production," Science 216 (1982): 821-827;
42. P. Sanchez, C. A. Palm, and T. J. Smyth, "Approaches to Mitigate Tropical Deforestation by Sustainable Soil Management Practices," in H. W. Scharpenseel, M. Schomarker, and A. Ayoub, eds., "Soils on a Warmer Earth," Developments in Soil Science 20 (1990): 213;
43. World Bank, "Development and the Environment: World Development Indicators," World Development Report 1992 (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1992), 135.
44. The title of a book shows the feet of clay: Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation (New York: Pantheon, 1984).
45. When the US president appointed distinguished scientists and engineers to report on technology that would matter to the nation during coming decades, they missed antibiotics, radar, space exploration, and jet-engine aircraft. "In fact, if you were to ask what were the exciting things that happened over the next several decades, they missed all of them, every one." Charles H. Townes, Cosmos Club Bulletin, Cosmos Club, Washington, D.C., October 1991, p. 17.
46. Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, Preparing US Agriculture for Global Climate Change, Report 119 (Ames, Iowa: Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, 1992).
47. National Research Council, Pest Management in Climate and Food (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1976), 128.