Discussions About Food Shortages and Population Growth

Varied Menus for Sustaining a Well-Fed World - NYTimes.com: "As promised, here are more reactions to this same query from a wide range of other analysts and practitioners focused on food:

Nina Fedoroff, a life sciences professor at Pennsylvania State University and visiting professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia:
Eternal Food Fight:

Here’s the long-distance back and forth between Brown and Smil (not done through direct e-mail exchanges but mediated by me):
Brown:

I don’t think this current price rise is temporary. There will, of course, be fluctuations in the grain prices, but they will be around a rising trend. Grain and soybean prices, and food prices more broadly, are moving up. There is not anything in sight to reverse this trend. If the world were to have a poor grain harvest this year, there could well be chaos in world grain markets by late summer.
You might want to take a look at the article I did in Scientific American a couple years ago, entitled “Could World Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?”
Next Wednesday, the 12th, I will be updating my thinking on this at a press teleconference to launch the new book, “World on the Edge.”

Smil:
There are always speculative food price currents and undercurrents but no end of days as so many of your fellow citizens, being the most scientifically illiterate people who ever lived, think. Just look at #1, China: imports less than 5% of its food and CONSUMES more food per capita than Japan!!!
Nothing has changed since I wrote that closing chapter of my 2000 feeding the world book: if China can do it, anybody (but Somalia) can [*]. Nor is India “starving.” Any food shortages are 95%+ a matter of poor or no governance, not any “extreme” climate and “gunwale inching”