Healthy Living For People and Planet Earth

Estimates of the World’s population in the year 2050 range up to as high as 10 billion.  I think it will be less as the current trend towards lower population growth continues.  The world is a 6.8 billion now and growing.  This is an interesting site where you can see the growth in real time.  Whatever the real number as the years go by, how everyone will eat is a real problem.  Many of us in the developed world, and especially those that are not poor citizens of the developed countries, tend to lose sight of the reality of food issues for the majority of people.  For most people of the world, organic carrots, grass fed beef, or non-gmo soybeans are as foreign as the concept of “disposable income”.  Of course I am one of the lucky ones who can try my best to buy healthy, ethically produced, food.  I can buy local produce, shop in a food co-op, and generally afford to be an ethical consumer.  If you are also fortunate in that regard, you should be shopping ethically also.  But what about everyone else?  It is not a pretty picture.

As discouraging as it can be, I sometimes I have a hard time seeing how 8 billion people will eat without the practices of modern agribusiness, genetically modified crops, and the vast array of chemicals I often rage against.  The world’s population is mostly poor and those people are moving from the countryside, where they once grew their own food, to cities.  They need to eat and they have very little money.  In the world of science and agriculture there is not even a debate over what will be needed to feed the world beyond the gates of the privileged populations of the developed world.

What got me thinking and somewhat discouraged today was reading a couple of articles and press releases that came through my news reader this week.  Here is just one example. Tell me what you think please.  I really believe that we are doing right by spending our money on food that has been ethically produced, on food that is healthy and wholesome, and whenever possible, on food that is produced in our local communities.  Is that a naive concept?  I don’t think so.  We do our best and if only 10 percent of the world’s population will ever be able to afford this diet, at least it is 10 percent.  But right now even though 10 percent might be able to afford to eat ethically, perhaps 2 percent currently are doing it.  It is that other 8 percent we need to convince.

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