031074 osv The Population Crisis-Another View
Dr. Colin Clark
I REGRET to say that the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has been responsible for giving the world a great deal of misinformation. This began in 1950, when Lord Boyd-Orr was Director-General. I had worked with Lord Boyd-Orr in the past he was a distinguished animal physiologist, but he had no knowledge of economics or politics. And it was he who made the statement that two-thirds of the world was hungry.
Now, this statement was based on a gross statistical error - he said confused two columns in a statistical table! But to hold a post such as this
implies very serious responsibilities, because although this statement was made more than 20 years ago, and subsequently has been universally denied, a great many people still believe it, including - I regret to say - a great many theologians and clergy who still use it in their sermons. It takes time for truth to catch up.
The FAO officials were perfectly aware that this statement was incorrect, so they supplemented it some years later with a statement that half the world was malnourished. At that time I was Director of the Agriculture Economics Institute at Oxford University, and I asked FAO for their definition of malnourishment and the evidence on which their statement was based. And the reply received
was surprising. They said: "We made the statement first; we are going to look for the evidence afterwards! " And, to make matters worse, they asked to borrow the best economists from the Oxford Institute to help them prepare the statement. And the best statement they could make after some lengthy time was that half the world did not eat as much as the inhabitants of Western Europe. Now, to treat the diet of Western Europe as constituting the borderline of malnutrition is a very remarkable decision. As any medical man can tell you, many of the inhabitants of Western Europe are suffering severely from
over nutrition!
Somewhat later, in 1969, the Director-General of FAO, Mr. A. H. Boerma, came out with a fresh statement. He said: "Half the population of the developing countries is malnourished." Now, this is very different from half the population of the world. When he made his fresh statement, I asked him on what evidence it was based. And e replied, quite happily: "None." 't was just a statement made without evidence.
Now, let us not go to the other extreme. Let us not say there is no hunger in the World. On the question of protein, there has recently been a remarkable change in the opinion of biochemists and nutritionists. There are, in Asia and in Africa, many indications of sufferers, particularly children, showing medical signs of protein deficiency. Nevertheless, the most recent work shows that in nearly every case the protein in the diet is adequate, but the children cannot assimilate it, due to a shortage of calories. This will mean a change in 1gricultural policy. It has been suggested until recently that agricultural policy throughout the
world should be aimed at producing a surplus of high protein foods, such as dried milk. We now know that what is needed for the hungry in Africa, or mostly in Asia, is an increased production of the existing staple foods, such as rice, with only limited supplementing by proteins.
'I published in India in September 1972, a more accurate estimate of the extent of hunger and of calorie shortage, with consequent failure to assimilate protein. It afflicts 25
percent of the population of India, which is a serious matter, but nonetheless very different from the FAO figure. The situation may be equally bad in Pakistan; not quite so bad in Indonesia. About China we have no accurate information, only extraordinary claims. There probably has been some hunger in China, although the situation is now improving.
Extravagant Estimates
The most interesting statement made by FAO was that of the FAO economist Dr. Pawley. In 1971 he was the principal guest at the Scandinavian Economists Conference. And he spoke very cheerfully; he said: "These previous statements by FAO have been much too easy for people like Colin Clark to criticize." He said: "Now, if we are thinking about the next 100 years, I see no difficulty in increasing the world's food supply to 50 times what it is now."
However extravagant an estimate you make about what is likely to happen to the world population in the next 100 years, it is certainly not going to increase 50 times.
You see, so much of the cultivable land in the world is still uncultivated; and that which is cultivated is cultivated extremely badly.
Some of you may have been looking at the figures published by the Club of Rome. (The Club of Rome is an association of scientists, economists and industrialists of international standing who are deeply concerned with the numerous problems present-day reality raises for the future of mankind as a whole.) I think you
Must regret the affront to the reputation of that city from the publication of such extremely erroneous information. I tried to find out from what source they obtained their agricultural advice. I could not do so, but it must be from some very misinformed source. They stated that it required 4,000 sq.m., to produce the subsistence requirements for one person. The actual truth is that on 2,000 sq.m., a good farmer can produce not subsistence requirements but a West European or American style diet, which is far more than is needed for subsistence or even for health. The Club of Rome took the figure which had been published by the United States President's Science Advisory Committee on the extent of arable land in the world; it divided this by the erroneous figure of 4,000 sq.m., failing to notice that a large part of the arable land is capable of double-cropping in
the tropics, and also failing to notice the very large areas of grazing land which, if properly fertilized, can probably make as big a contribution to a man's diet as the same area of arable land.
The Club of Rome has also made alarming statements about minerals. The United Nations, shortly after it was formed in 1949, called a Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources, and I was asked to give one of the addresses at the Plenary Session. What I said then - I now see - was not nearly optimistic enough. But at that Conference was presented the best evidence then available from geologists and mining engineers about the state of the world's resources of different minerals.
Role of Technology
So recently I looked up this table from 1949, and I subtracted from it the minerals which have been abstracted from the soil since 1949 until now; and according to this method of subtraction, I find that we exhausted the world's entire supplies of lead and zinc five years ago, and that we are using up the world's last copper this year! These estimates by geologists proved to be extremely erroneous. And, after all, so much of the world has not yet been explored, and a mining engineer's idea of what minerals are accessible is
constantly changing. In mining, even more than in manufacturing, technology goes on improving, and minerals which were not capable of utilization 20 years ago are proving quite capable of utilization now.
The Club of Rome also forgot that minerals are not used - we have the word "used," but this is misleading. The elemental atoms remain in existence. I have an advantage over other economists in that my original training was in science; I am a qualified chemist, although I have not practiced that art for many years. And every mineral which has been used is capable of being recovered and recycled: it is still in existence. There is cost associated with recovery. But if the world showed any sign of the shortage of any mineral, two things would happen: every effort would be made to recover and recycle it for further use; and, secondly, substitutes would be
found. Past experience shows how good chemists and engineers are at devising substitutes. When the price of copper rose in the past, many uses of copper - as in car radiators were substituted or partially substituted by other metals. Lead, which for hundreds of years was the principal metal used in sanitary engineering, has now been largely replaced by cast iron and then by plastic. And there are a great number of these substitutions which are possible.
Predictions
Well, at this point, you might perhaps ask me: what is my prediction on world population. The factors controlling the size of family are-not
economic, they are sociological, and I am not a sociologist. But I think I can point out the factors which limited family size in Europe and North America. They were - as I say not economic, they were: the replacement of the extended family by the nuclear family; the introduction of compulsory education; the prohibition of child labor You see, the traditional peasant family, right up to the 19th century, wanted children for labor on the farm in the busy season:, even children of six,
it was calculated, could do more work than the cost of their maintenance. But
most of Europe up to-the 19th century, and in Asia at the present day, a child is the only form of old-age pension. In the days when there were no old-age pensions, parents were anxious to bring children into the world for all these reasons, and particularly as a security for their own old age.
Now, I am leaving with you the problem: how long will it take for Asia and Africa and Latin America to go through all these sociological transformations which took a long time even in Western Europe and North America? They took 100 years with us. Even if you make the assumption that it will be 50 years before these have taken place, I think the size of family in Africa, Asia and Latin America will remain high for 50 years at least. And I think world population
will go on growing probably for 150 years from now, and will be very much larger than it is now. And these three continents: Asia, Africa and Latin America will completely overshadow the rest of the world. When we resent their population growth, I think there is at the back of our minds a hidden jealousy of the much stronger economic and political position they are going to hold in the world.
Because - as I have indicated - population growth will bring with it not poverty but great economic prosperity.
My Conclusion
I will come back again to the question of Japan, because many of you may believe Japan is an example of what a country can do by limiting its population growth.
The first point I must make is that, if there is any change in the rate of population growth, change in the size of family, the effects
are felt for a very long time. I mean, you must take the responsibility, if you take any action in any country to check population growth or attempt to increase it, you are taking an action whose full consequences will not be felt until perhaps a 100 years later.
The number of births in Japan fell very rapidly after 1949 when, under the
American military government they carried through an abortion law. But, while this
reduced the -number of children, and did not immediately increase the number of pensioners, it had the
unexpected effect of greatly increasing the labor force. Japan is the only country in the world in
which the size of the industrial labor force has doubled in 20 years,
because of the adolescence of children who were born before 1949 farmers coming into the
industrial labor force, and married women
going out to work because they had fewer children to look after. So, for the last
20 years, Japan has been - as I put it - spending her demographic capital, and the remarkable economic growth in Japan in 20 years was due not to a reduction in the labor force, but to an increase in the labor force.
This is now coming to an end; the Japanese are now faced with a serious labor shortage. But, you will also be interested to hear, they have changed their size of family in Japan. For 15 years after 1949, the size of family was below replacement level, it was below the 2.2 required to replace the parental generation. In recent years, there has then been substantial rise in the size of the Japanese family. N