“World Problem Of Food, Not Space"

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31729, 12 July 1968, Page 5

“World Problem Of Food, Not Space"

For the people of the developed nations it was difficult to accept that some 35 million deaths were caused by starvation each year, said Professor K. M. Buchanan, professor of geography at Victoria University, addressing the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Geographical Society.

It was easier and more comfortable to the conscience to affirm that these 100,000 deaths a day were caused by disease rather than starvation, which could be prevented, he said. Disease over much of the world merely hastened the process of dying initiated by chronic and long drawn-out malnutrition and corroding semi-starvation, said Professor Buchanan.

The third survey by the Food and Agriculture Organisation on the world’s food position showed that the gap between the developed and less developed regions tended to increase rather than decrease, and the imbalance between food and population was likely to increase, said Professor Buchanan. He said that he found it hard to subscribe to the view that hunger today was the result of procreative recklessness.

“I find it strange that the people of affluent nations, after having themselves multiplied so exceedingly in the

nineteenth century that they were able to overflow from Europe and swamp vast areas in the Americas, Africa and Australasia, should suddenly appear as peddlers of population planning to all those entering on a period of surging numbers.” The population explosion was real enough, but it had to be brought into perspective, said Professor Buchanan. Humanity was still a fair way removed from any real congestion and the main problem was not space but the capacity of the earth to feed man.

At present, the earth, and even more the sea, was only partially used by man, said Professor Buchanan. Any solution to Asia’s food problem could come not from imports, which increased indebtedness and vulnerability to outside interests, but from rejecting stereotyped views of overpopulation, by mobilising the latent productivity represented by the unemployed and underemployed of this part of the world.