Long-term shortage of food and live animals

The remarkable increases in food production in industrial and developing countries in 1970s and 1980s have come in part at the expense of soil and water resources. There are no major new technologies waiting in the wings to improve the food output. Food scarcity and higher prices may dominate the 1990s.

1. Improvements are unlikely. Our past success has brought us alarmingly close to the ecological ceiling. There is a growing sense in the scientific community that it will be difficult to restore the rapid rise in agricultural yields we saw between 1950 and 1984. In agriculturally advanced nations there just isn't much more that farmers can do.

2. Humanity already uses, destroys, or "co-opts" almost 40 percent of the potential output from terrestrial photosynthesis. Doubling the world's population will reduce us to fighting with insects over the last scraps of grass.

1. Long-term shortage of commodities
2. Decline in food production

1. Long-term shortage of sugar and honey and preparations thereof
2. Long-term shortage of salt-water fish, crustacea and molluscs and preparations thereof
3. Long-term shortage of meat and meat preparations
4. Long-term shortage of livestock
5. Long-term shortage of fruit and vegetable preparations
6. Long-term shortage of dairy products and eggs
7. Long-term shortage of coffee, tea, cocoa and spice manufactures
8. Long-term shortage of cereals and cereal preparations
9. Long-term shortage of animal feedstuffs excluding unmilled cereals

1. Unaesthetic foodstuffs
2. Prohibitive cost of nutritious food
3. Nutritional deficiencies
4. Famine

1. Unsustainable population levels
2. Stagnated development of agricultural production
3. Shortfalls in agricultural crop production
4. Overgrazing
5. Instability of production of food and live animals

1. Surplus domestic animal production

1. Using food shortage
2. Increasing amount of food
3. Establishing policy to ensure global food security

1. Shortage
2. Short-termism