
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 16, 1994                   TAG: 9401160002
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

FOOD-SUPPLY REPORT WARNS EARTH HAS REACHED ITS LIMIT

Slowed growth in food supplies provides real evidence that the planet's biological limits may have been reached, an environmental group says.

Among the signs: a three-month doubling of world rice prices, millions of acres of rangeland chewed down to uselessness, spreading water shortages and an $80,000 tuna.

"As a result of our population size, consumption patterns, and technology choices, we have surpassed the planet's carrying capacity," Worldwatch said in its 11th annual "State of the World" report on global environmental and social conditions.

The growing pressure on world food resources points to hungry times ahead as Third World populations continue to explode, said the report, released Saturday.

For more than two decades, scientists have been saying the world can produce enough food to feed all its inhabitants and hunger can be solved by increasing yields and improving distribution.

The new report says family planners, not farmers or scientists, hold the key to future food supplies.

Lester Brown, Worldwatch president, said his staff of economists and social scientists has been noticing the trend for a few years, but the critical picture only came into focus with this year's research and analysis. Worldwatch, whose report is being published in 27 languages, is a private, non-profit research group.

Without radical scientific breakthroughs, large increases in crop yields that have allowed production to keep up with 40 years of rising consumption will probably not be possible, Brown said.

The study notes that from 1950 to 1984, world grain production grew 260 percent, raising per-capita production by 40 percent. Over the same period, the world's waterways yielded so much fish that the seafood catch per person doubled.

"But in recent years, these trends in food output per person have been reversed with unanticipated abruptness," the report said.

It points to several trends:

Fish harvests from the world's oceans have leveled off at about 100 million tons a year, which may not be exceeded. Brown noted that seafood prices are rising rapidly, and a bluefin tuna can now bring as much as $80,000, or more than $100 a pound.

Water bodies are increasingly polluted and fresh water shortages are occurring in the United States, Mexico, China, India and the Mideast.

Grain production has slowed dramatically in the past few years, with per-capita output of rice, corn and wheat falling 11 percent since 1984. Worldwide stocks of rice are at 20-year lows, and the price on the Chicago Board Trade has doubled since Aug. 30.

Fertilizer use has dropped 12 percent since 1989, evidence that maximum yields may have been reached for many crops.

Cropland has increased only 2 percent over the last decade worldwide, with topsoil disappearing and some areas such as China rapidly losing farmland to industrialization.

Overgrazing, deforestation and imprudent farming have ruined 5 million acres since 1945.

The only hope lies in family planning and a continued search for new ways to produce food, Brown said.

by CNB