7,000,000,000 and counting...

There is a book titled The Story of B by Daniel Quinn that discusses the problem of over-population here on Earth. It is a fantastic book with some very thought-provoking notions about the social and religious implications of agricultural development. In it, Quinn begins with the Malthusian theory that, as food supplies increase arithmetically, the tendency of populations is to increase geometrically, and, thus, that there is a limit to the number of people that our planet's food supply can support.  There are estimates that the world's population surpassed seven billion on October 31, 2011, having doubled in size since the mid-20th century. These figures are staggering in both size, and rapidity, and the sustainability of this growth should be addressed and discussed.

Quinn writes that given the relatively small period of time that humans have inhabited the planet, population growth has spun out of control in the last century and searches for the reasons behind the swell. The main concept he brings up is the theory that since mankind drifted away from hunting and gathering as a means of sustenance and towards a more complex form of agriculture 8,000 years ago, the amount of food necessary to sustain a growing population has been abundant and has therefore enabled such a population boom. This led to a division of labor that had not previously existed. According to Quinn, this is not necessarily a good thing.

As humans' ability to produce food becomes more efficient, and the control of the food supply becomes consolidated to fewer and fewer producers, the impact of disasters such as floods, droughts, and other crop failures becomes more exacerbated. A corollary of this is that as the knowledge of food production becomes more concentrated (U.S. agricultural exports hit $115 billion in 2008), so does the power to control populations by increasing or decreasing the food supply. This idea of 'totalitarian agriculture' is a concept Quinn explores in depth in the book and links to the biblical story of the Garden of Eden.

In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge and are banned from the garden for doing so. Quinn sees this as an allegory for man's invention of agriculture and domestication of animals. With this 'knowledge', mankind now has the ability to control the food supply, and the producers are given the power to sustain or starve, knowledge that can be seen by some as god-like. A glaring example of this is the U.S. trade embargo with Cuba. The issues the United States takes with Cuba's politics has led to severe human rights implications related to malnutrition and disease. Though the knowledge of good and evil is not explicitly stated in Genesis, the relation that Quinn draws from this knowledge to the policy of today's food producers is obvious - that as the world's population continues to grow exponentially with poverty and famine at alarmingly high levels, man's original sin was attempting to harness this power of life.

Looking forward to the next 50 years, when analysts estimate the global population to reach nine billion, a moral question to consider is how to avert catastrophe as we approach the Malthusian limit. Though we have the technology to feed the people of the world, the issue for debate should be how to do it sustainably, humanely, and responsibly.