First World Problem
We waited for too long.
Twenty years ago, in 2006, a professor named William Kliener published an dissertation on the sustainability of population in the early twenty-first century, with very negative findings. When the population hit the ten billion mark, it projected, there simply wouldn’t be enough food produced to sustain the population. Given the rate countries were trading arable land for urban development, the dissertation predicted that there would be chaos and massive shortages in fifty years, barring major advances in the technology of food production and distribution.
CNN and the other media outlets ran it, of course, with statements like ‘Food Shortages Imminent!’ and ‘World Hunger in Fifty Years’, but there were plenty of experts who came on to reject it, claiming that land renewal efforts were going on better than ever and technology would undoubtedly advance to provide for more efficient farming. Some concerned citizens planted fruit trees in their backyards and others made vegetable gardens, but most who cared didn’t even have room to grow a decorative plant, much less have a garden.
In 2017, there was a study commissioned by the government on ‘the sustainability of urban population centers with current agricultural standards’. After six months, the panel was dissolved shortly before their recommendations were to be made; their findings were never released to the public. Around then, the first signs of the troubles happened - luxuries like caviar and alaskan king crab had always been expensive, but everything else suddenly started climbing as well - bread and milk gained twenty cents in two months. There was outrage, of course, and ‘deficiencies in planning’ was the explanation given, with assurances that it would be fixed.
Food prices stabilized for six months before climbing.
In 2020, America quietly started trading food, ton for ton, to anyone that would ship to us. For six years it worked, first with rubber and steel, then manufactured goods, then high end electronics being sent out in a direct trade for food which people had realized was vitally necessary because there simply wasn’t enough produced to support six hundred million people.
In 2028, we found out that Kliener was off by thirty years.
The riots started when the the cargo ships no longer streamed into our bays, bringing the food we desperately needed. Until then, we had clung on to the impossible hope that it was just a temporary problem, that with some tightening of our belts and foreign assistance, we would weather the shortages. Sure, we would have to be more sparing, but we were in America, the land of the plenty; the worst case scenario, according to the government, would simply require us to ration our supplies.
But when the president appeared on the screen and told us that the foreign governments were suffering from famines themselves and couldn’t send anything else, when he said, at the end, ‘we can do nothing to produce more food’, that’s when we knew that we weren’t going to make it. Everyone already had their own garden, no matter where they lived - even in the city, people sacrificed their patio to create some of the food themselves; it had become too cost prohibitive otherwise. But there was only so much that could be done, and it was never enough.
There was violence, more than any country had seen in decades.
The riots weren’t everywhere, though; some towns had managed to stockpile supplies and now simply closed themselves off to the world. Other people formed up camps with those they could trust and struck out in the wilderness - what little of it left - and tried to subsist in small groups. But in the cities where the billions of people lived, there was only chaos. It was fifty-fifty, people said, on whether a random apartment was looted or its owners dead.
In six months, New York went being a city of fifty million to a city of three million. This was the price that we paid for not thinking ahead, for living, collectively, beyond our means.
It will be okay, eventually. The population has stablized, and we won't make the mistake again, of doing such a thing. Eventually, technology will outpace our expansion, and we won't have to worry about how many people there are and how many tonnes of grain we are producing.
Someday, though it isn't today, no one will have to say to their twelve year old, "I'm sorry, but there isn't any food today."
Twenty years ago, in 2006, a professor named William Kliener published an dissertation on the sustainability of population in the early twenty-first century, with very negative findings. When the population hit the ten billion mark, it projected, there simply wouldn’t be enough food produced to sustain the population. Given the rate countries were trading arable land for urban development, the dissertation predicted that there would be chaos and massive shortages in fifty years, barring major advances in the technology of food production and distribution.
CNN and the other media outlets ran it, of course, with statements like ‘Food Shortages Imminent!’ and ‘World Hunger in Fifty Years’, but there were plenty of experts who came on to reject it, claiming that land renewal efforts were going on better than ever and technology would undoubtedly advance to provide for more efficient farming. Some concerned citizens planted fruit trees in their backyards and others made vegetable gardens, but most who cared didn’t even have room to grow a decorative plant, much less have a garden.
In 2017, there was a study commissioned by the government on ‘the sustainability of urban population centers with current agricultural standards’. After six months, the panel was dissolved shortly before their recommendations were to be made; their findings were never released to the public. Around then, the first signs of the troubles happened - luxuries like caviar and alaskan king crab had always been expensive, but everything else suddenly started climbing as well - bread and milk gained twenty cents in two months. There was outrage, of course, and ‘deficiencies in planning’ was the explanation given, with assurances that it would be fixed.
Food prices stabilized for six months before climbing.
In 2020, America quietly started trading food, ton for ton, to anyone that would ship to us. For six years it worked, first with rubber and steel, then manufactured goods, then high end electronics being sent out in a direct trade for food which people had realized was vitally necessary because there simply wasn’t enough produced to support six hundred million people.
In 2028, we found out that Kliener was off by thirty years.
The riots started when the the cargo ships no longer streamed into our bays, bringing the food we desperately needed. Until then, we had clung on to the impossible hope that it was just a temporary problem, that with some tightening of our belts and foreign assistance, we would weather the shortages. Sure, we would have to be more sparing, but we were in America, the land of the plenty; the worst case scenario, according to the government, would simply require us to ration our supplies.
But when the president appeared on the screen and told us that the foreign governments were suffering from famines themselves and couldn’t send anything else, when he said, at the end, ‘we can do nothing to produce more food’, that’s when we knew that we weren’t going to make it. Everyone already had their own garden, no matter where they lived - even in the city, people sacrificed their patio to create some of the food themselves; it had become too cost prohibitive otherwise. But there was only so much that could be done, and it was never enough.
There was violence, more than any country had seen in decades.
The riots weren’t everywhere, though; some towns had managed to stockpile supplies and now simply closed themselves off to the world. Other people formed up camps with those they could trust and struck out in the wilderness - what little of it left - and tried to subsist in small groups. But in the cities where the billions of people lived, there was only chaos. It was fifty-fifty, people said, on whether a random apartment was looted or its owners dead.
In six months, New York went being a city of fifty million to a city of three million. This was the price that we paid for not thinking ahead, for living, collectively, beyond our means.
It will be okay, eventually. The population has stablized, and we won't make the mistake again, of doing such a thing. Eventually, technology will outpace our expansion, and we won't have to worry about how many people there are and how many tonnes of grain we are producing.
Someday, though it isn't today, no one will have to say to their twelve year old, "I'm sorry, but there isn't any food today."