Predictions of a global food crisis — that the world’s food production would not be able to keep pace with population growth — have a long history. In the 18th century the English cleric Thomas Robert Malthus hypothesized that gains in per capita resources would inevitably be outstripped by population until food supplies finally acted as a barrier to further growth.1
Currently no emphasis is done on preventing runoff of surplus fertilizer and denitrification reaction pathways in the soil. Human nitrogen and phosphate is also typically wasted in the wastewater processing facilities, or is even dumped uncleared into the seas, causing eutrophication and dead zones, which further degrade the overfished sea as a source of human food.
With nitrogen and phosphate becoming scarcer and more expensive there will be probably ways to optimize current inefficiencies. But in general I would expect less agricultural output, pricing the most vulnerable out of the food market even in absence of climate-caused mass crop failure, possibly concerted breadbasket failure. Onset of which will be apparently sudden, despite many data points pointing to the possibility.
Currently no emphasis is done on preventing runoff of surplus fertilizer and denitrification reaction pathways in the soil. Human nitrogen and phosphate is also typically wasted in the wastewater processing facilities, or is even dumped uncleared into the seas, causing eutrophication and dead zones, which further degrade the overfished sea as a source of human food.
With nitrogen and phosphate becoming scarcer and more expensive there will be probably ways to optimize current inefficiencies. But in general I would expect less agricultural output, pricing the most vulnerable out of the food market even in absence of climate-caused mass crop failure, possibly concerted breadbasket failure. Onset of which will be apparently sudden, despite many data points pointing to the possibility.
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