YORKTON - A recent headline at producer.com caught my attention.
The header stated ‘Grain’s supply and demand ratio finds balance’.
I appreciate the International Grains Council (IGC) crunches numbers to see if anticipated production matches demand, but it’s a little unclear what constitutes demand?
Is demand the typical orders made by traditional buyers, or does it also factor in the hunger in countries with insufficient funds to buy the wheat or rice to feed all the people around the world who go to bed hungry, including far too many even here in Canada?
That Canadians go to bed hungry shows of course it’s not just a government’s inability to pay. There are a lot of issues around the hungry which can range in the inability to get food where it is needed, so mental health care – the reason is dependent on where you are.
That said production is still capable of feeding the world as it is today, thanks to agriculture advancements ranging from continuous cropping, to new pest controls, more productive varieties, and understanding of nutrient needs.
And, it is reasonable to believe food production can rise.
Russia could get out of Ukraine and both those countries could focus on modernizing farming rather than buy bullets and bombs.
Expanding modern farming techniques to various other countries of course could increase production. Such tech advancement will not happen quickly – again that’s largely a cash issue – but the potential exists.
Looking toward the future, feeding people will be largely a wealth distribution issue, and you need only look south to President Trump’s policies, that the wealth distribution divide is going to grow in that huge country based on policy.
How the world shrinks the overall divide – coming to a place where the mega rich have fewer diamonds and yachts and everyone has a home and a full belly is a massive question – one it appears no one is working very hard to answer.
In the same vein is the reality world population continues to grow, and ultimately all resources are finite. There will be a point there are too many people and not enough resources.
It is time to at least have a discussion about how to reasonably cap population. Is it possible? Not easily obviously, but that doesn’t mean we should not have the discussion.
We know world co-operation is never easy as seen by efforts to address climate change.
Countries like the US are too focused on making money to facilitate widespread change.
Other countries like Russia don’t even seem to be aware of a problem.
The world seems unable to collectively deal with whole-world questions – but our future may rely on finding a way to do it.
