THE ECONOMIC PAMPHLETEER: Running Out of Land for Food

Abstract

First paragraph:

The challenge of preserving enough farmland for food production will be a defining challenge for the 21st century. Lester Brown, icon of the Worldwatch Institute, identifies food scarcity as "the weak link" of modern society (Brown, 2012). He points to the growing global demand for food and fuel, eroding soils, declining aquifers, and global climate change as major challenges to the future of human civilization. All of these challenges could be met, but not without a fundamental transformation in current ways of thinking about both land and food. A market economy will neither provide food for the hungry of current generations nor preserve enough farmland to provide food for generations of the future. Any society that allows markets to determine how much and what kind of land is used for food is not sustainable. This could be thedefining challenge of the 21st century....