Malthus was far from unique in such reasoning. William Jevons, an English economist writing in the 1860s, noted how more eficient steam engines counter-intuitively meant more coal was consumed rather than less – an observation since referred to as the ‘Jevons Paradox’. Between Malthus and Jevons the verdict appeared to be the same: humanity’s ingenuity, as vast as it is, can never hope to keep pace with its voracious appetites.
Yet the story of agriculture over the second half of the twentieth century tells us otherwise. While feeding a world of 9 billion might seem impossible, especially so within the broader context of the five crises, the most important achievement of the last sixty years suggests it can be done. Its name? The Green Revolution.
Food as Information: The Green Revolution
At present the amount of land given over to agriculture is around 37.5 per cent of the world’s land area – which is more or less the same as it was in the late 1970s. Yet our planet now supports an extra 3 billion people, while average calorie consumption has increased and food deprivation has fallen. Indeed, in the last two decades alone, the number of people experiencing hunger halved to around 10 per cent of the world’s population. All of this was achieved while fewer and fewer people were employed in agriculture.
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