The argument that the population explosion presents a serious challenge to the ability of the world to feed itself and a serious threat for the recovery potential of the planet has been well rehearsed. The Reverend Thomas Malthus, an ordained minister of the Anglican church and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, stated in his famous essay nearly 200 years ago that “population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio” (Malthus, 1798). Since 1950 the human population has doubled, and U.N. projections indicate that it is set to reach about 8 billion by the year 2020 and 9.5 billion in 2050. The trajectory of the sigmoid model predicts that the current exponential increase will stabilize around a figure of 10 billion by 2100. A different model is the J-shaped curve, in which exponential growth during favorable conditions is followed by a dramatic, if recoverable, crash resulting from density-dependent destruction of the environment. Whichever model will apply in future, population growth will be checked somehow, depending on the influence of food security, fertility control, and socioeconomic factors. Many of the chapters in this book have focused on land resources and the opportunities that exist for improvements in crop production. While a substantial component of the planet’s biomass consists of vegetation, it would be unwise to underestimate the direct and indirect contributions of livestock to food security. In this chapter I consider the impact of scientific advances on animal production and the human food chain and examine the reasons there are strong dissenting voices raised against the adoption of some technologies and to what extent such concerns affect progress. The Brundtland Commission (1987) defined food security as secure ownership of, or access to resources, assets, and income-earning activities to offset risks, ease shocks, and meet contingencies. In other words, not everyone is intended to be a subsistence fanner, but everyone must possess the means to acquire an adequate diet. For most of the world’s population this is a rational interpretation of food security, with the prosperous producing that which is surplus to indigenous needs and the less developed areas benefiting from that surplus’s distribution to areas of scarcity.
Chapter 4: Russia’s Food Security and Impact on Agri-Food Trade
