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Destitute World 3 sees little of those benefits. Its people have moved
by the millions to cities, where food distribution often fails, and economics
reduce access to food. Violence and political forces further aggravate food
scarcity and poverty.
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The World’s Food Production Per Capita
Stagnates and Falls, 1980 = 2025
Some of the technologies that have helped drive the Second Green
Revolution appear in the box below.
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A Quest for Variety and Sufficiency
Technology promotes greater food productivity around the world
• Waste reduction including recycling more agricultural wastes and animal wastes
• Education and extension for farmers to reduce practices that cause land degradation
• Innovative irrigation schemes including drip irrigation, soil moisture retention applications,
synthetic soils
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Technology continues to reshape food and agriculture in World 1:
• Fully integrated, sophisticated agricultural practices and smart farms
• Genetic engineering of crops for pest resistance, greater productivity, other traits, food sci-
ence, food synthesis, food design, and food processing
• Packaging and storage technology
• Distribution information and logistics technologies, including automatic ordering, distribu-
tion, and inventory of food
• New food preparation and kitchen technologies
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A Quest for Variety and Sufficiency
A changing population drives change in the food business. Critical
demographic trends include:
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The American menu changes: trends in u.s. consumption of certain foods,
1990-2025
→
→
→
Red Meat Sugar
→
→
→
Fish - refined sugar
→
→
→
Poultry - synthetics
→
→
Eggs Fresh fruits
→
→
→
→
- cholesterol free Packaged foods
Dairy → Fresh vegetables
→
→
→ →
- skim milk Packaged vegetables
→
- yogurt → Synthetic foods
- cheese → Coffee →
→
→
→
→
Flour/cereals Nutriceuticals
→ → →
- rice
- corn
Key
→ →
up
→
up markedly
→ → →
down
→
down markedly
down slightly
→ unchanged
Production
In 1990, the largest 4% of farms in the United States produced half of
the food. As of 2023, nearly two thirds of U.S. food production is done by
about 200 of the largest corporate farms. Most of the rest of U.S. farms pro-
duce specialized, lower-volume products, such as designer vegetables,
nutriceuticals, gourmet foods, and all-natural foods.
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Fewer Farms, More Acreage in U.S. Agriculture
Thousands of U.S. Farms
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In open-field farming, traditional wind and water erosion problems have
been reduced. Topsoil loss to runoff and blowoff are down 80% since 1990.
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Changing quality of animal protein
For human consumption, animal meat long offered a good source of protein, but too much fat.
Today’s cows, chickens, and pigs are leaner because of a combination of genetic manipulation
and drugs administered during their development. The drugs have no residual effect on hu-
man consumers.
At the same time, there is a greater variety of chicken products available and greater flavor
diversity.
In 1990, dairy cows averaged 6,300 kilograms of milk per year. Today, smaller cows that
consume less feed produce as much as 12,000 kilograms.
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New crop varieties improve soils and cope with climate change
Among the new plant varieties developed through biotechnology are
several corn, barley, wheat, rice, cotton, and canola varieties that improve
soils and reverse some environmental degradation. Nitrogen-fixation was in-
troduced from legumes several decades ago. Nitrogen-fixing varieties, how-
ever, are less productive because they use energy for nitrogen fixing at the
expense of seed or fiber production. Today the varieties are rotated with non-
nitrogen-fixing varieties for periodic soil enrichment. More recently (2017),
grain varieties were developed that scavenge some pollutants and salts from
soils. The current favorite is the corn variety Calgene Y-6. New varieties have
also been introduced to deal with reduced rainfall in the midwestern United
States.
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Unprecedented diversity in the U.S. diet
There is more diversity in the U.S. diet today than at any time since the
16th century in Europe. More of the more than 3,000 known edible plants
found in nature plus new ones created in the laboratory are farmed today for
human food. Some new foods are:
• Tubers, in wide varieties, including the oakra that tastes like a potato
with sour cream already added, and the arrachacha, that tastes like a
cross between celery and carrots
• New seafoods such as krill paste and kelp
• New food sources such as petroleum, biomass, wastes, weeds, insects,
and vermin
Processing
Industrial food processing, a third of which takes place on farms, is a
highly automated, robotized process. On-line controls, instrumentation, and
sensors, manage the grading, sorting, and sizing of produce. Some grains
enter processing streams directly from field-harvesting gantries through dry
slurry pipelines.
Farm- and factory-based processing complexes rely on computer mod-
eling and decision making to coordinate available inputs and market demand
(e.g., finding and buying the cheapest starch at a given moment). As with
automated farms, the typical operator works from a control booth and rarely
needs to leave it.
Additional process controls and sensing assure quality throughout the
process. Examples of these include on-line, real-time testing for microorgan-
isms, viruses, trace toxins, and chemicals using DNA probes and monoclonal
antibodies (MABs).
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form of fat. Unlike its predecessors, the molecule is designed to cook like
natural fats as well.
Packaging
Food packaging is at the center of the food revolution in the United
States. Packaging brings flexibility, storability, portability, and preparation ease
to the user. Reflecting a long-term social trend toward greener practices, food
packaging produces 75% less waste since once-through plastics and other
packaging materials came under the Waste Reduction Act of 1999.
Food packaging is central to the development of choice and flexibility
in food consumption in the United States. Walkaway foods (see box below)
instant meals, and smart packaging bring new food options to the user.
Edible packaging and packaging that heats a product when the user pulls a cord have spread
the popularity of walkaway foods.
Walkaway foods inspired by ethnic cultures come and sometimes go based on migration and
popular culture from other countries. Today the two most popular walkaway foods are fruit
sticks and Andean spiced dumplings.
• Biosensors for freshness and quality include tags built into packages
that turn colors to show whether food has spoiled or the number of
days of freshness left.
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• Built-in food preservation. Edible antispoiling or antiripening agents
are coated onto or bred into fruits and vegetables. These allow fruits
and vegetables after picking to stay fresh until the user washes or cooks
them.
• Ingestible packaging.
• Reusable packaging.
• Bar coding and other labeling, including microchips.
Distribution
The logistics of food distribution is tied directly to the transportation
system of the United States. Part of the food distribution system in the United
States involves a nationwide network of distributors, wholesalers, retailers,
and commercial customers and was turned into an information business. Every
institution involved can place orders in or take orders off the network auto-
matically. Large-scale buyers keep standing orders on the system, with sellers
sometimes bidding electronically for the sale. Most large sellers and whole-
salers coordinate goods buying, selling, and handling electronically as well,
with robotic warehousing and loading done with little or no human labor. In
perhaps 15 years, robotic vehicles will carry cargo from source to user, re-
moving more human labor from the distribution chain.
Large commercial and retail users likewise coordinate their kitchen or
plant automation and warehousing electronically through the network. Infor-
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A Quest for Variety and Sufficiency
mation is tracked all the way through to point of sale, with orders, reorders,
and market planning based on the data collected.
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The success of McDonald’s continues in its seventh decade
McDonald’s restaurants have survived decades of shifting food habits and changing food tech-
nologies in the United States and around the world. Still a favorite of Americans and others, the
McDonald’s restaurant of today is a fully-automated version of the original concept. McDonald’s
used to employ about 50 people per restaurant. Today, most of its outlets are 100% automated
modular food service systems. Model H-13, the most common configuration, is a unit of 2.5
meters on a side tha can be set up in office buildings, apartments, on street corners, in parks,
and as a drive-through service. A typical H-13 unit is illustrated and explained below.
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A Quest for Variety and Sufficiency
• The automated pantry. The unit assesses its stock and tells the user or
kitchen computer whether ingredients are on hand. Alternatives and
substitutions may be suggested. Assuming certain ingredients are miss
ing, the system asks the user whether to order them. Automatic weekly
orders can easily be generated based on the automated pantry’s self-
assessment.
• Robot chefs. The robot chef, still a high-priced item, is really an appli
ance. With a fully automated pantry and robotic cooking appliances, it
is now possible to have meals prepared automatically, or with only as
much work as a person cares to do. Most major brands, for example,
have fully programmable menus (for individual tastes and nutritional
and medical needs). The gourmand simply keys in or calls in the de
sired menu half an hour to an hour before eating time. Current models
have a repertoire of about 30 dishes, based on pantry size and options.
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A typical food day for a U.S. family
Mom, 37, ate a nutribagel on the way to a 9:00AM supersonic flight to London. Business class
served her a California-style lunch, which she chose when boarding. The fruit juice with her
meal incorporated a drug to offset jet lag. Then, food was prepared from processed compo-
nents at the airline’s central catering facility and was microwaved in flight. It was well-cooked
and tasty. Landing three hours later, she stopped for a snack at a street vendor, buying a
hydroponic banana pear. That evening, Mom had a Ploughman’s platter catered in from the
pub down the street.
Dad, 39, as he begins an early work shift, gets a multivitamin fruitshake from a machine at the
hospital. At midmorning, Dad stopped for yam chips and rye cola. Dad skipped lunch be-
cause he was in surgery for three hours; instead, he chewed a quick-energy gum. In late
afternoon, Dad left for home, stopping along the way for a chicken sandwich at a McDonald’s
Automat.
The kids, a boy, 11, and a girl, 8, go to primary school. They ate breakfast with Grandmother
at home before racing off to school. The boy ate Fruit Rocketstm, a cereal for prepubescent
boys. The girl had waffles with passion fruit syrup. At school, in mid-morning, the kids drank
fortified milk and ate a cookie (state law requires it). School lunch was pizza sticks.
Grandmother, 70, ate a blueberry muffin for breakfast, which was prepared in her Cuisintech
in 45 seconds. She could have touched the screen for cranberry, bran, or kiwi walnut. When
she orders the batter refills, she always gets the “Traditional Pack.” Grandmother lunched after
exercising at the Seniors’ Club with friends, on angelfish over salad greens.
Grandmother likes organically grown food. She had open-ocean tuna, lnuit style, with tundra
greens. Dad had Polynesian food. His parrotfish were farmed in underground tanks in Mil-
waukee, fed on brewery wastes. He ate roasted taro and drank coconut milk with his meal.
The boy, currently learning about the Amazon in school, wanted rainforest food, and ordered
a tapir cutlet with cassava. The girl who had just played a virtual game in which she explored
the Austrian alps by parasail decided on Austrian food. She had the zero-calorie strudel.
Robotic assistance and frozen and vacuum- packaged prepared entrees make it possible for
Taste of America chain restaurants to serve 312 different entrees with a staff of 6.
Minimizing wastes
Wastes from food processing and preparation are minimized with ge-
netic engineering and better preservation and packaging techniques. The
least waste is produced by industrial food processing, in which nearly every
waste material is recycled into some use at the facility or sold for the prepara-
tion of foods and chemicals elsewhere. In the home, packaging and spoilage-
resistant foods have paid off in far less waste. Wastes from home and industry
are effectively captured for reuse from sewage systems, most often finding
their way into energy-producing units that feed on waste biomass.
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The medicalization of food
Modern technology, particularly genetics and information technology,
combine to make food an integral part of human medicine. Since the end of
the last century, we have seen the medicalization of food. For people with
special problems or particular needs, nutritional assays are done periodically
to set up diet plans. Smart cards, which people carry to restaurants and stores
and use with their home appliances capture and track nutritional information
specific to the person.
Those with less acute food needs (or interests) generally choose to get
their nutrition willy nilly as they eat healthful and not so healthful foods. They
know medicines and food supplements are available to correct any deficiency.
Pharmaceuticals and food have converged as nutriceuticals—foods
custom fit to individual needs and designed to supplement nutrition. These
products have replaced many dietary supplements and some medicines.
World powers and international bodies have decided over the past two
decades on a combination of the second and third options. They have stopped
distributing food every time a country falls into famine. The rationale, estab-
lished at the 2009 Conference on the Planet in Rome, is that every region and
country of the world must strive to sustain itself through its own resource
development and participation in world trade. The conclusion of the confer-
ence, still adhered to today, is that the world cannot feed everyone. Countries
are responsible for their own political and economic stability, so long as what
they do does not impinge on other countries or adversely affect the global
commons.
Famine today is most often caused by political instability, the destruc-
tion of the environment, and unemployment. Natural disasters are consid-
ered unavoidable, and international bodies are willing to relieve their effects.
More pernicious is the inability of millions of people to buy the food they
need. Even where food is available, many starve. Unemployment rates esti-
mated as high as 67% in metropolitan slums contribute to much of the world’s
hunger.
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Technology transfer is the international philanthropy of choice today.
Despite limited success over the past 40 years, it is considered an economical
and ultimately effective way to spur sustainable development. It also creates
synergy between nations with the relationships it builds between businesses,
governments, and research institutions.
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A Quest for Variety and Sufficiency
Nigeria perhaps best illustrates the plight of the destitute around the
world. Though the country is atypically large in population and blighted with
more demographically produced food problems than many of its neighbors,
it shows what a chronic demographic crisis will do to many of the world’s
poorest countries. There are rich Nigerians, but the mass of the population
lives in poverty, with about a third subject to hunger and famine. The suc-
cesses of Nigerian economic and technological development have been in-
sufficient to pull its population out of destitution.
Food and agriculture science and technology have raised Nigeria’s over-
all food production, but that growth has been eaten up by the growth of the
country’s population between 1990 and 2025. Per capita food production is
at 82% of its 1980 levels.
Nigerian agriculture, except for three dozen commercial or govern-
ment large scale farms, is peasant agriculture. Family-run farms produce grains,
meat, milk, and vegetables, with considerable hand and animal labor and
gasoline-powered tractors. Produce is sold to agents who carry it in trucks to
city markets. Value-added processing is done by farmers, agents, and street
vendors, and includes meat and fruit drying, preparation of cheese, yogurt,
fermented milk, and grain. The processing is low technology, using traditional
materials.
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ing industries, including petroleum, natural gas, petrochemicals, light ma-
chinery, fish, cocoa, and rubber. With two-thirds of its 246 million people in
cities, it suffers all of the expected problems of urban poverty: overcrowding,
lack of housing, unemployment, disease, hunger, pollution, and violence.
Millions of Nigerians move to the cities each year with the glimmer of hope
that they will find jobs and build modern lifestyles for themselves. Few suc-
ceed, but the gamble is worth it to many. Today, at least 49% of Nigerians are
unemployed or underemployed.
With its oil resources, Nigeria should have been an African success
story. Two things happened that scuttled that ambition. First, Nigeria, in spite
of new finds, overproduced its oil reserves, and effectively ran out of oil in
2015. Driven by raging demand in developing Africa, it could not resist the
cash earnings. The money earned over four decades of production was in-
vested poorly, and often expatriated. Much of the money was used to pur-
chase food internationally, reducing pressures to advance and modernize
Nigerian agriculture. The oil bonanza long kept government officials from
acknowledging and tackling the excessive population growth that Nigeria
was experiencing. Serious efforts to slow growth came too late and were only
marginally effective.
Second, Nigeria was unable to reverse the runaway metropolitanization
of its population. The population changed from less than a third metropolitan
in the 1980s to two-thirds metropolitan today.
The Nigerian oil boom also slackened efforts to develop other indus-
tries for export. Nigeria has never met the potential for surplus food produc-
tion that it has, and little food is exported.
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Cholera returned to Nigeria to a significant degree in the 2000s and
2010s. The epidemic has yet to run its course despite peaking in 2011. More
than a quarter of the disease’s victims go untreated.
Traditional Nontraditional
→ →→ → → → →→ →
Fresh fruits Red meat
→→
→ →
Fresh vegetables Sugar
→ → →→ → → →→ → → →
→ →
- fresh milk Synthetic foods
→
Bread
→
Cassava
Key
→→
up
→
up markedly
→→
down
→
down markedly
up slightly
→
down slightly
→
→ unchanged
Nigeria has been the site, and even showcase, of many food-produc-
tion technologies over the past 30 years. Multinational food companies have
been at the forefront of these. Despite isolated successes, the country suffers
recurrent famine. In the period 2018 through the present, 3.7 million people
starved to death in Nigeria, almost 2% of the population.
Nigeria’s sporadic successes in development and in food production
have often made the country the destination of refugees from neighboring
strife- and hunger-torn countries. Thus its 246 million population is swelled
in its poorest ranks by all-too-frequent incursions of new mouths to feed.
Though its population growth is slowing, new people to feed will contribute
to lower per capita food production at least until 2040.
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people in the affluent world do, per capita. The protein comes from more
sources, including more fish, more poultry, and exotic local species such as
large rodents and lizards.
Agriculture in Nigeria is painfully slow in changing what it produces.
Traditional crops, cassava, wheat, corn, cacao, and milk still dominate pro-
duction. Other foods are imported. Nigerians now eat more imported foods,
including synthetic foods and packaged, preserved foods.
Production
Agriculture and food industries employ 24% of Nigerians, down from
54% in 1990. Production is still labor-intensive. A fifth of Nigeria’s food
production is basic subsistence farming of a hectare or so plots by poor fami-
lies. For rural people, cassava and grains are still the dietary staples. How-
ever, spurred by government initiatives for food self sufficiency, Nigerian agri-
culture modernized from the 1960s to 2010s relying on the extensive use of
fertilizers, irrigation, hybrid crop varieties, and genetic engineering of cas-
sava. The second Green Revolution (1995-present) expansion took its toll on
cropland and on the ecology. No longer were farmers able to or likely to shift
cultivation, giving fallow lands the time to be restored to fertility between
crops. The strategies used were not sustainable in the long term and contrib-
uted to increased instances of famine as soils were depleted, and water tables
lowered. New desertification affected 21% of Nigeria’s land mass from 1990
to 2020.
Subsistence farming is no longer an option for the majority of the popu-
lation. Nigeria is 65% urban, and its urban residents rely on truck farming
and large scale commercial and government farms to produce their food.
Commercial farms make up 30% of Nigeria’s land in agricultural production,
up from only 2% in 1990. One big actor is the multinational Nestle, which
produces processed food products in Nigeria, partly relying on its own farms
for inputs.
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A Quest for Variety and Sufficiency
these foods, especially corn, over the next decade. Cocoa remains a major
export.
Innovations have been proposed and tried for Nigerian agriculture over
the past three decades. A notable example is microlivestock.
Nigeria has intermittently been able to feed its population adequately
over the past 25 years. Famine has been a recurring phenomenon, most
notably in 1998, 2011, and 2016. Food-production expansion has been at
the expense of the environment, and unsustainable practices have continued.
Eleven thousand square kilometers of agricultural land are lost annually to
overcropping and erosion. Some aquifers are depleted and saline.
The ecology of Nigeria has been greatly damaged by agriculture and
other activities. Little of the original rainforest is left in the country. Soils are
depleted and eroded, the Niger Delta is heavily silted, and forests have been
stripped of their trees.
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Farming practices and new technologies are slow to arrive
Biotechnology and genetics have made only marginal improvements
for peasant farming in Nigeria. Great success came with improving the ge-
netic strain of Fulani dairy cattle. Coupled with techniques for better care of
the animals, introduced through television soap operas, Fulani cattle milk
production is at 157% of its 2010 level.
Processing
Food processing is a cottage and small-business industry in Nigeria.
Except for some state-run and development-project food factories, most people
get their processed food from peasant entrepreneurs and street vendors. Im-
ported food, such as powdered milk, flour, rice, and canned fish, makes up
the balance of the Nigerian diet.
Home enterprises have taken over from some food processing, includ-
ing drying fish and meats, fermenting milk, grinding grains, and baking breads.
Government mills using decades old technology make flour from domesti-
cally grown grains. The construction of a plastic bag factory in Lagos in 2006
meant home enterprisers and street vendors could package their produce much
more effectively for distribution and sale.
Solar meat and fruit drying is done on roof tops and in solar-drying
apparatus. The technology involves simple sheet metal boxes that concen-
trate the heat of the sun.
Distribution
Food distribution is the point of frequent failure for the Nigerian food
supply. Conflict, theft, and infrastructure problems inhibit the flow of goods
from ports inland, from farms to cities, and from cities to cities.
The greatest imbalance in food distribution for the country is the diffi-
culty peasant farmers and small-enterprise food producers have in transport-
ing their produce to and into the sprawling metropolitan zones. The Lagos
Region Light Rail Network, built between 2001 and 2014 meant many more
people could reach the central markets with their inventories. Planners did
not expect and did not allow for the use of the lines for goods transport. Train
cars were altered with alternate seats removed in the 2010s to accommodate
people with goods.
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A Quest for Variety and Sufficiency
either. But local storage removes the need for repeated transport and can
mean less loss to theft and vermin overall, as long as storage silos are vermin
proof and secure.
Packaging is coordinated poorly with logistics in Nigeria. Foods re-
quiring refrigeration or dry conditions in transport and storage are frequently
damaged and sometimes lost.
End use
Cooking and eating food in Nigeria combines the traditional meth-
ods—and customs of the Fulani, Hausa, lbo, and other groups—with the re-
alities of urban life and imported western practices. The influences of immi-
grants and refugees is also great. Chinese food is a tremendous fad today,
with shops, restaurants, and street vendors selling it throughout Lagos and
Zaria.
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2025
home. One positive development has been the widespread sale of food safes,
extremely tough polymer cabinets that latch closed and seal tight. These are
produced cheaply in the region with recycled plastic wastes. Nine hundred
thousand have been sold in Nigeria since 2017.
Fermenting milk and milk/grain mashes, as well as cheeses are pre-
ferred ways to use milk in the absence of other storage technology. The prac-
tice is still dominant. However, portable food irradiators are available in
larger villages to create milk and milk products that need no refrigeration.
About 4,000 are in use. Fresh milk is sometimes made lactose free (for the
lactose intolerant), using filtering membranes.
Mariculture
• Plant varieties genetically programmed to collect water when it is more
plentiful, e.g., at a set time in the growing season, and conserve it for
drier times
• Sustainable agriculture approaches
• New advances from biotechnology
• Irrigation technologies, including drip irrigation
• Macroengineering schemes to replenish aquifers, reroute river courses,
and raise rainfall levels.
• Farming the cities (see the box below)
• Technology to restore heavily leached tropical soils, including artificial
soils, nutrient supplements, and restorative ground cover plantings
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A Quest for Variety and Sufficiency
Farming the cities makes urban life more sustainable
Urban farming makes it possible for the urban poor to provide some of their own food sup-
plies. It incidently helps clean the air and recycle organic wastes. Urban farming has taken
hold in several dozen of the impoverished world’s megacities. Once certain techniques are
taught, regulations changed, and materials provided, it takes little pressure to get people to
sustain an interest in working plots on roof tops, alongside roadways, and in city parks. The
remaining problem for most gardeners is theft of produce. Technologies available include:
• Lightweight, moisture-retaining artificial soils
• Systems that combine pigeon or chicken husbanding with vegetable farming
• Plant varieties, through biotechnology, that tolerate urban polluted air and even scavenge
pollutants from soil and water
Food
• Innovative storage possibilities on the mass and household scales
• Transport and distribution technologies and strategies including modu-
lar containers and vermin proofing
• Information flow to raise distribution efficiency with monitoring of sup-
plies, demand, and logistics planning
• Delivery on a mass scale of nutritional capsules to the hungry
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Critical Developments: 1990-2025
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A Quest for Variety and Sufficiency
Unrealized Hopes and Fears
Event Potential effects
Population growth in the poor countries slows Food production per capita reverses its down
by 2010 to 1.5% annually. ward trend and grows to adequate levels.
Successful economic development in the Elimination of hunger in all but isolated
poor countries of the world. situations.
Political instability or warfare in a large Threatens international food supplies;
developed country. exacerbates famine and poverty.
Higher levels of greenhouse warming, Disrupts world agriculture, causes mass
temperature rises 2.3 degrees. desertification in midwestern North America,
Amazonia, Western Europe, Georgia, and
Ukraine.
Nuclear accident blights millions of Disrupts food supplies and causes political de-
hectares of agricultural land. stabilization, potentially with retaliation for
economic damage done against the perpetrator.
Runaway transgenic animal and plant Infestation destroys agricultural lands, parks,
populations. wild areas; international agreement to outlaw
transgenic plants and animals.
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