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edited by Sir Joseph Hutchinson, 144 pp, with illus, $4.95, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Norman B. Roberg, MD, Reviewer
Rome

JAMA. 1970;211(9):1547-1548.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

These eight essays from Cambridge University describe clearly, without oversimplification, the fundamental factors governing food production and population growth. They emphasize that increasing cost, rather than productive capacity or distribution, limits food production throughout the world. Arable land can not be increased appreciably because the irrigation of deserts and the conversion of rain forests to rice paddies is very expensive. Increased food supplies depend, therefore, primarily upon the increased productivity of land now under cultivation, and this requires costly machines and fertilizers. Thus, food becomes progressively more expensive. Only through industrial growth, increased wealth per capita, and a sound economy can poorer countries produce, or buy, more food. The rich countries can assist, but not support, the poor ones. The United States, short of water and doubling its population within 50 years, is no longer a world granary.

Increased food production, made possible by comparably increased industrial wealth, could supply . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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