"The speed at which mankind consumes indispensable natural resources and produces contaminants has already exceeded the physically sustainable speed in many cases."3) However, the authors maintain a hope that intellect and creativity on the part of human beings who deeply regret such behavior will lead to the attempt to make significant improvements.
Increasing Inscrutability and Anxiety
Progress of worldwide efforts to cope with the population explosion has ironically been complicated by fears of global environmental deterioration, of floods, draughts, abnormal weather, global warming, etc. associated with the increased sophistication and geographical expansion of human activities. Such global upheavals have become even more critical because of the disorder of the world politics resulting from the end of the cold war.
The food problem represents these multiple crises. The drastic advance of modernization, industrialization, and urbanization have caused rapid reduction of land area including land needed for food production, shortage of water resources, and degradation of soils. With no more room left for improvement of agricultural productivity, the high point having been attained soon after the Second World War, the capacity of the world's food supply to feed the ever increasing population has become an urgent issue.
More than one billion people are said to be suffering from starvation in the world. The world population exceeded five billion in 1987, and will likely reach 6 billion in 1999. This will represent an increase of as much as one billion in a mere 12 years. Without any further improvement in food productivity, an additional one billion are expected to face starvation.
There is both pessimism and optimism about the possibility of increase in food production. The pessimistic views are represented by the studies of Lester Brown4), who has become internationally well known.
