UNIVERSAL STARVATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 231, 29 September 1928, Page 9 (Supplement)

UNIVERSAL STARVATION.

IS IT IN PROSPECT! For the "food-scarers," as a section of the British Press delights to call them, "the vision of the human race dying of starvation has an irresistible fascination," we are told. But Sir Henry Hew, who is responsible for that remark, goes on to say, "Of course, the possibility is undeniable. The surface of this planet is limited, and the potential increase of its population is unlimited. If, therefore, the human race increases indefinitely, a time will come when there will 1 not only not be food enough, but not even room enough on the earth." In fact, Sir Henry tells us that there is "another risk which is seldom thought of, although it is always present. From time to time, over wide tracts of the earth's surface, the food crops of the year fail, and the people perish unless they are supplied with food produced elsewhere. If in any one year the crops all over the world wero to fail, there would indeed be general starvation. Mankind lives from hand to mouth, or from year to year, and there are no reserves of food if the crops of one year fail." Nevertheless, Sir Henry thinks the danger of universal famine a remote one, and he tells us in the London "Sunday Times": *

"How long ago is it since man first appeared on the earth is a question about which authorities differ. But I imagine it will be generally conceded that it is not less than 20,000 years, and probably much more. The present population of the world might have descended from the original pair of human beings in less than 2000 years. Obviously, therefore, the potential fecundity of the race gives i:o measure of the actual increase of population, and other factors must be taken into account in makin" any estimate of future probabilities. ° "Again, with regard to the risk of a universal faliure of crops we can only say that, so far as records exist, it ha's never yet happened, and, further, that the cultivation of the chief food crops is now spread over so wide an area, and subject to such diversified conditions, that simultaneous failure is highly improbable.

'Those who prophesy that the human race will increase indefinitely, or that the world's food crops will ail fail, can not be contradicted; thev can only be disbelieved."

In the same paper there appears a e°- f. Henr y by Sir Daniel Hall, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of who observes: ~ <<SI T. Henry appears to believe that the adjustment of food supply to popula'on is so automatic that food scarcity never occurs, and never will occur, at teast simultaneously all over the world. But food scarcity has occurred; what else set up the waves of invasion and the wanderings of the peoples that overthrew the Roman Empire ? "Let us not dismiss the fear of population outrunning food supply as imaginary when we see it happening before our eyes in India and China, countries which do display food scarcity, and by their example are a menace to the stability of Western civilisation."