India is projected to have a  population in 2031 even larger than China’s along with the other 3 billion people in developing countries who are dreaming the American dream.

Since everything we eat can be converted into automotive fuel either in ethanol distilleries or biodiesel refineries, high oil prices are opening up a vast new market for farm products. This is resulting in fuel producers competing directly with food processors for supplies of wheat, corn, soybeans, sugarcane, and other foodstuffs.

Demographic projections show world population increasing from 6.1 billion in 2000 to 9.1 billion in 2050. In the year 1900 there were only a few cities in the world with a million people.  Today there over 400 cities that large, and 20 mega-cities having 10 million or more residents.

Consider that if someday China should have 3 cars for every 4 people, as the U.S. now has, its fleet would total 1.1 billion vehicles, well beyond the current world fleet of 800 million.  Providing the roads, highways and parking lots for such a fleet would require paving an area roughly equal to China’s land used to grow rice.

Irrigation is taking more and more energy worldwide. In the United States, close to 19 per cent of agricultural energy use is for pumping water.  In China and India the per cent is much higher.  In the U.S. transport, processing, packaging, marketing, and kitchen preparation of food account for nearly 80 per cent of food system energy use.

Water is becoming a scarce commodity.  Africa’s Lake Chad, once a landmark for astronauts circling the earth, is now difficult for them to locate.  The lake has shrunk by 95 per cent in the last 40 years.  We each drink about 4 liters of water per day in one form or another while the water required to produce our daily food totals is at least 2,000 liters – 500 times as much.  This helps explain why 70 per cent of all water is used exclusively for irrigation.  Another 20 per cent is used by industry and 10 per cent goes for residential purposes.  More than 50 per cent of the world’s people are over pumping aquifers as they struggle to satisfy their growing water needs including India, China and the U.S.

There are two types of aquifers:  replenishable and non replenishable (or fossil) aquifers.  Most of the aquifers in India and the shallow North China Plain are replenishable.  When these are depleted, the maximum rate of pumping is automatically reduced to the rate of replenishment.  For fossil aquifers, such as the vast U.S. Ogallala aquifer, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer, depletion brings pumping to an end.  For the Southwestern United State or the Middle East, the loss of irrigation water means an end to agriculture.  Deep water wells around Beijing now have to reach 3,000 feet.  Wheat production is dropping steadily in China due to loss of irrigation reserves.  It takes 1,000 tons of water to produce one ton of grain.  Many of India and Pakistan’s water tables are falling by 6 to 20 feet per year. Pakistan’s population is growing by 3 million per year.  Iran, a country of 70 million people, is over pumping its aquifers by an average of 5 billion tons of water per year, the water equivalent of 35 per cent of its grain harvest.  Its water tables are shrinking by 9 feet per year.

Many rivers are now drained dry before they reach the sea such as the Colorado in the U.S. and the Yellow, the largest river in northern China.  Other rivers that run dry or are reduced to a mere trickle during the dry season are the Nile, the Indus which supplies most of Pakistan, and the Ganges in India’s most densely populated areas.  Tributaries of hundreds of rivers worldwide have simply disappeared.  The world’s demand for water has tripled over the past 50 years.

No surprise that our forests are fast disappearing…driven by energy from the sun, the trees pump water from the water table, through the roots, trunk and leaves, up into the process of transpiration.  Collectively the forest pumps millions of liters of water daily to the atmosphere.  Given the local climate conditions, this evapotranspiration translates into summer rainfall, helping to sustain crops.  When the forests disappear, this rainfall declines and crop yields follow.

The thin layer of topsoil that covers the plant’s land surface is the foundation of civilization.  This soil, measured in inches over much of the earth, was formed over long stretches of geological time as new soil formation exceeded the natural rate of erosion. Sometime within the last 100 years soil erosion began to exceed new soil formation.  Dust bowls are becoming more common such as the Dust Bowl in the U.S. Great Plains during the 1930’s, the dust bowls in Russia’s Virgin Lands in the 1960’s, the huge one that is forming today in northwest China, and the one taking shape in the north of Africa.Ten per cent of the earth’s land surface is cropland, but an area twice this size is rangeland – land that is too dry, too steep, or not fertile enough to sustain crops.  So 20 per cent of the earth’s land surface, most of it semi-arid – supports the world’s 3.2 billion cattle, sheep and goats.  An estimated 180 million people worldwide make their living as pastoralists tending these herds.  A typical steer is in feedlot for only a matter of months in the U.S. so even here grazing is the norm.  In 1950, 238 million Africans relied on 273 million livestock.  By 2004, there were 887 million people and 725 million livestock.  Most countries face similar explosions of people and livestock with depleting grazing land to support them. Most deserts in the world are expanding.

Fisheries are collapsing worldwide.  The oceanic fish catch climbed from 19 million tons in 1950 to 93 million tons in 1997.  Almost all fish in the world are declining rapidly and many have reached the point where the breeding stock deplenishment has or is killing the entire species.