Plants and population: is there time?

Abstract

The year 1998 was the 200th anniversary of the publication of Malthus’s famous first essay on population (1). Malthus argued that agriculture could not increase production as fast as the lust between the sexes would inevitably increase population size, and therefore that humans were condemned to poverty, famine, pestilence, and vice. Malthusian worries have been echoed by many since Malthus first wrote. Today discussions about the future growth of food supply and population are increasingly informed by the awareness that human activities impinge on the Earth’s ability to sustain them. There is concern about the ecological and environmental consequences of expanding the food supply further to feed the still rapidly growing numbers of humans. In 1968, a young Stanford biologist named Paul Ehrlich published a short book called The Population Bomb (2). This widely read book warned of the dangers of continuing rapid population growth, especially in the poor countries of the world. In the same year, 1968, J. George Harrar, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, gave a talk entitled “Plant Pathology and World Food Problems” before the First International Congress of Plant Pathology in London (3). Harrar celebrated the cultural and material achievements of humans but emphasized the need for scientists to help solve the persistent problems of “wars, … , hunger, poverty, disease, ignorance, social and cultural deprivation, and overpopulation.” Harrar noted that there were then just under 3.5 billion people in the world and anticipated 6 billion by the year 2000. He urged the development of improved forms of contraception. “If there is evidence that birth rates can and will be reduced, vast effort to augment world food supplies will then become increasingly meaningful” (ref. 3, p. 587). Harrar described the past contributions of plant pathology to the increase of crop production and the need to …