For the last forty years or so, despite the pessimistic view that Malthus had two hundred years ago, we were able to enjoy the situation where we could be free of these pessimistic views. However, more recently since the beginning of this decade, the growth rate of food production has begun to decline and in some worst cases, the population growth rate outgrew the food production, which is increasing by about o/o per annum, whereas, the population is growing by between I .6 and I .7 o/o Per annum. In other words, the relationship between the growth rate of population and food supply has now reversed. So once again, we're faced with the very old question of not having enough food supply to feed all the people on this planet. So how are we to redress the situation? It is a very difficult question.

And another question that we have to address is whether to be pessimistic of optimistic. I, personally, don't think we should be too pessimistic or too optimistic, but personally, I think we should be a little bit on the pessimistic side because if we tend to be optimistic, we may be complacent with the situation and we may not try to make any more effort. Now suppose we do nothing about the population increase and let it grow as is, what are we to do on the food supply side? I would like to list up some of the concerns that we have, although I believe my colleagues will elaborate on this later.

l) Green Revolution then contributed to the food increase in recent years. Can we expect another round of Green Revolution? I, personally, doubt it because with the high input of chemical fertilizers, we were able to increase the productivity of land, but the input has reached the limit. No matter how much we increase the chemical input, fertilizer input, we will not able to see further growth, proportionate growth of productivity of land. Technically speaking, this is called the principle of the situation. In other words, even if we double the fertilizer input, the productivity would only increase by I .5 tons and then, it's the absolute productivity that is going to decline. That's where we are today. In other words, the more fertilizers we use doesn't necessarily mean more food we will get. We have already reached the limit in that linear relationship.

And in the area of farmlands, there are no more new farmlands available because after World War II, we have almost exhausted all the agricultural frontiers. And not only that, we have had to convert conventional farmlands into industrial, commercial and residential area, With the more urbanization concentration of people, we need land to build school, roads, houses and plants which would mean we will have to convert conventional farm-lands to these other uses. So it is difficult to improve the land productivity over what it is today and the availability of new farmlands is impossible, Which means that we can't expect another Green Revolution. So, one area of hope is biotechnology. But is it really warranted in laboratories? Yes, we understand that we see some viable results. However, would biotechnology contribute sufficiently to feed the increasing number of population? Will that kind of biotechnology become available? I am not too sure about that and I have keen interest in this area. Of course, we need to see concentrated effort in biotechnology, but the question remains as to whether biotechnology would be able to make contributions in time. From the population point of view, that's the concern that we have. If I have some time left later, I would like to talk a little bit more about population.