Historically, there are two main narratives to the world’s agriculture story. The first is of Norman Borlaug’s desire to feed the world’s growing population through technological advancement, scientific discovery, and innovation. The second is of William Vogt’s drive to preserve our natural resources, which he saw as essential to feeding the world—and, indeed, safeguarding every aspect of humankind’s future. Science journalist Charles Mann explored the differences between the two in his most recent book, “The Wizard and the Prophet.”
When Borlaug and Vogt started their research, about two-thirds of the world’s people were malnourished or chronically short of food. As society and modern agriculture has advanced, that number has decreased. In the 1970s, the United Nations estimated that 40 percent of the world was undernourished, and another 20 percent didn’t get enough food to eat. In the 1980s, for the first time in recorded history, the average person on Earth had access to enough nutritious food.
“Now, most of the world has enough to eat, which is an amazing change that has happened in our own lifetimes. Hardly any place on earth do they farm like they did in the 1920s and hardly any place in the world is so poor that people are starving in the way that they were then,” Mann said. “So, we’re living in this completely different world and it is very hard to remember that [Borlaug and Vogt’s] values were rooted in two sets of realities that are different now.”
Mann posited that due to agriculture’s success in increasing food security around the world, people have become disconnected from the farm, instead associating their food with the supermarket.
“There is a kind of shock, I think, when people who have nothing to do with it are confronted with what it takes to produce lots of food at scale. They just don’t realize what it takes to feed 7 billion people,” Mann explained. “People should understand how modern agriculture works. Then they can make intelligent critiques if they want to.”
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