When economists discuss the constraints for the economic development of a country like Georgia, one thing is always taken as given: That people have enough to eat. Of course, there are people in this country who are suffering from hunger and malnutrition, but these are rather exceptional outgrowths of extreme poverty. By and large, Georgians have enough money in their pockets to buy bread, vegetables, meat, and dairy products at street vendors, local food markets, or even supermarkets. The fact that hunger was overcome in Georgia and many other regions of the world is a spectacular achievement that is often not appreciated appropriately.

Since times immemorial, the growth and development of human societies were constrained by the supply of food. Up to about 8000 BC, humans were hunters and gatherers, moving around in rather small groups and following their prey animals. Then some ingenious people in the Middle East and Mesopotamia had the amazing idea to stay at one place, substituting seeding for gathering and breeding for hunting. Regarding its consequences, this Neolithic Revolution was arguably the most important leap human civilization ever made – it dwarfs the invention of nuclear power or the trip to the moon. Through seeding and breeding, the food supply became much less prone to the vagaries of nature. Agriculture was born.

For the most part of human history that followed, food production was still the most relevant constraint for human progress. A farmer had to feed himself and his family, and only what he produced in excess of that, the so-called surplus, could feed artisans, poets, composers, musicians, priests, and scholars. So whether or not a society developed a culture that went beyond primitive rural folklore was determined by the size of its agricultural surpluses. It is, therefore, all but surprising that the first high civilizations of humankind came into being in exactly those areas where food was relatively abundant, namely at the Nile, where more than one harvest per year was possible even in ancient times, and at the fertile regions of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in Mesopotamia.

Through the invention of agriculture and the ongoing development of its techniques, it was possible to sustain a much bigger population than previously. Yet nonetheless, there was not enough food for everybody. In the end of the 18^th century, the English economist Thomas Malthus wrote his famous Essay on the Principles of Population. From demographic data and records of famines in medieval and renaissance Europe, he developed the first theory of demographic dynamics. The crucial assumption of his theory was that human reproduction proceeded exponentially but food production grew only linearly, if at all. As a result, the number of humans living in the world would regularly exceed what could be sustained with given agricultural resources, notably land. Today’s economists agree that by and large, his analysis was correct in describing the population dynamics of medieval and renaissance Europe pretty well.

It is an interesting side aspect that Malthus set up his economic theory in order to back a political standpoint (like many economists do). Malthus was born into a privileged family. A clergyman by profession, the Christian ideal of poverty and altruism arguably caused a cognitive dissonance between his religious beliefs and the fact that many people in his society not only had difficulties to make meets end, but were suffering from the most severe poverty, hunger, and starvation. A minority, on the other hand, to which he belonged, was living quite comfortably. Malthus’ theory intends to justify the huge wealth differentials of his days, as it suggests that famines, starvation, and malnutrition are inevitable facts of human society. Any measures to alleviate this misery through charity and redistribution would just lead to higher reproduction rates of the poor classes and thus eventually to even more suffering than if one would just let the poor people die. Not a very likable theory, and maybe Malthus deserves well that he invented these ideas exactly at the time when they were invalidated.

For the last 200 years, Malthus was not an issue. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the food supply has gradually become less of a concern in developed countries. One could even say that the term Industrial Revolution is misleading because, for most of the last two centuries, productivity gains in agriculture surpassed those of the manufacturing sector. In addition to higher productivity, fossil fuels became the predominant source of energy, and the land was not needed anymore to feed workhorses and oxen for production and for the transportation of people and cargo. Likewise, the physician workforce of humans was largely replaced by steam engines and later combustion motors. All this led to a situation in which the economy did not depend anymore on energy grown on farms, allowing to free the agricultural resources that were previously used for energy generation for food production. Food was no binding constraint anymore for human reproduction, and the world population soared. Today we are at 7 billion people living on this planet, and it is projected to exceed 10 billion within this century.

THE FUTURE

So far we looked at the past, but what is the future of food supply? With all the great developments in mind, one should keep in mind that even in the current situation, hunger has not disappeared, in particular in Africa. There are estimations that every single day, more than 30.000 children in the world are dying from hunger and malnutrition.

According to Hans-Werner Sinn, a contemporary economist from Germany, the situation is rather going to become worse than better. To understand his argument, one has to remind that world oil prices started to rise about 10 years ago and ever since remained on a high level, just briefly interrupted by the 2008 financial crisis. Yet even though the world economy is in an ongoing recession for many years now, oil prices do not return to their previous levels. Though the oil industry and many oil economists would disagree, it is well possible that world oil resources, at least those that are easily accessible, are approaching exhaustion. If that would be the case, future oil prices would simply not return to their previous low levels. But how does this relate to the food supply?

The higher the price for oil, the more reasonable and profitable it is to produce biofuel. The production of biofuel, however, competes with the production of food. If more and more of the land is devoted to the production of rape, this goes at the expense of food production, and food prices go up. Indeed, in 2008 there were riots in the streets of Mexico and other Latin American countries triggered by an increase in food prices, making it difficult for people to make their traditional maize pitas. This was directly connected to the huge amount of biofuel produced in Europe, the USA, and South America in that year, reducing the supply of maize and wheat on the world market. Though currently in Europe and the USA biofuel production is only profitable if it is subsidized by the government, high oil prices and improvements in biofuel technology may make these subsidies obsolete. According to Sinn’s pessimistic theory, we are now moving back to a pre-Malthusian world in which food production and energy generation are competing for the same agricultural resources. If he is right, the vicious patterns predicted by Malthus’ theory would start to haunt humankind again in the future.

It is Eastern now and many Georgians subscribe to a strictly vegetarian diet. This may point to a way for coping with the world food supply problem. If there is any possibility to feed a future population of 10 billion people, it will almost surely imply that most of them go vegetarian. It uses 16 plant calories to produce one beef calorie, and hence one can feed a much more people if they do not eat meat. If all Chinese would eat as much meat as the North Americans, there would not be enough land in the world to provide the necessary amount of meat. Seen in this way, the Easter Lent may be a model for the future, not for religious but for economic reasons. A Happy Easter celebration to everybody!