FOR FIVE DAYS LAST WEEK, the politics of food, population, and the environment was played out in Rome. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), a branch of the United Nations, convened a World Food Summit. It was rather like a sequel to the 1994’s U.N. Population Conference, held in Cairo. Tales of apocalypse and planetary devastation abounded. Fiction was the order of the day.
In the Third World, the rate of population growth has been decreasing for nearly 30 years. And there is no evidence to suggest imminent famine. On the contrary, calories available to the average Third World resident have risen by about a third since 1960. Diets have improved, also: There have been increases of about 60 percent in vegetable-oil consumption and about 50 percent in animal-based protein (e.g., milk, meat, eggs, and cheese). What famines we have seen in recent decades have been more a matter of abhorrent politics than of food production.
