Hunger and poverty have been on the decline for a long time – why a setback is now imminent

For thousands of years, but certainly since the Neolithic Revolution, hunger has been a constant companion of man. “Save us from plague, famine and war, O Lord” – this ejaculation from Switzerland in the early modern period names the plagues of mankind, which repeatedly struck mercilessly and decimated the population.

As the prayer shows, hunger was seen as a God-given fact. It was an intermittent but ultimately unavoidable plague, probably God’s punishment for human sin. This does not mean that nothing was done about it – those in power were only interested in avoiding hunger crises in order to maintain power, as they could quickly lead to revolts. But the idea of ​​ending hunger once and for all is only emerging in modern times.

The first quasi-scientific view of the hunger problem came from the English economist Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834). However, Malthus saw no solution to the problem, but viewed hunger as a necessary consequence of population growth. Food production is increasing linearly, but population is increasing exponentially, he argued. This population drop must inevitably lead to hunger crises, which then decimate the population again.

This pessimistic view was extremely powerful; Malthusian fears are still circulating. Neo-Malthusian catastrophe scenarios were particularly popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when optimism about progress in the industrialized nations began to wane. An excellent example is the American biologist Paul Ehrlich with his bestseller The Population Bomb (1968). In it he predicted that hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation in the 1970s. It has not come to that.

Long before Malthus, the first signs of more efficient and productive agriculture were already visible in Western Europe, which – at least in peacetime – almost conquered famine. The basis for this success was the collapse of the medieval feudal system in the 16th and 17th centuries and the accompanying commercialization of agriculture. Free labor increasingly replaced the unfree labor of serfs. The peasants, who now had to pay their rising taxes in money, had to produce crops of which they could sell the surplus. In addition, the increasing competition ensured that better techniques to increase labor productivity and new cultivation methods could assert themselves.

By the end of the 16th century, development in prosperous Holland, the dominant province of the United Netherlands, had progressed so far that a general famine in Western Europe did not affect the population of this province. Agriculture in the Netherlands was highly commercialized and specialized; Industrial crops such as flax, hemp and hops were also grown. A similar development began a little later in England. The last peacetime famine there occurred in 1623–1624. The agricultural area increased, partly due to the draining of swamps. By the end of the 17th century, English agriculture was the most productive in Europe. Famine continued in other regions of the continent; in Eastern Europe into the 20th century.

Changed cultivation methods and new crops have significantly increased agricultural productivity. They started at the end of the 18th century; for example with the transition from the traditional three-field system to crop rotation. First, instead of leaving the field fallow as in the three-field system, fodder was planted. This made the expansion of livestock farming possible. Since the early 19th century, the regular alternation of leaf and stem crops has become common and is still practiced today. Yields also increased due to the extra fertilizer generated by livestock farming.

With the introduction of new crops, the variety of food and fodder crops increased. The potato in particular deserves a mention here, which was grown on an increasing scale and became a staple food in most European countries. In addition, other crops such as sugar beet, clover, cabbage, maize, rapeseed and hops played an increasingly important role. These innovations were accompanied by technical innovations, such as the plow with curved mouldboard, which replaced the hoe. At the same time, the ox increasingly gave way to the horse as a working animal in the field.

Fertilizers are needed to restore the nutrients and mineral salts in the soil that are removed by crops. Human and animal feces have been used for this for thousands of years. In addition, fertilizers have been used since about Roman times with nitrogen-storing plants, which were then plowed into the soil. These measures could not prevent the soils in Europe from becoming increasingly depleted in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. Crop failures and famines increased as a result.

Artificial fertilizers solved this problem and helped agriculture achieve unprecedented yield increases. We owe this mainly to the German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803-1873). He recognized that it is ultimately inorganic substances that serve as nutrients for plants. This crucial finding paved the way for the industrial production of fertilizers, as is common practice today. However, the big breakthrough in fertilizers came only at the beginning of the 20th century, when it became possible to synthesize ammonia in an industrially feasible process – ammonia is the main precursor of nitrogen fertilizers.

In the 1960s, a development that we now call the “Green Revolution” began. It includes the introduction of new technologies in agriculture in developing countries – especially in Asia – the development of modern high-quality wheat and rice varieties and the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

It was mainly the Green Revolution that contributed to the tripling of global food production in recent decades. Growth has surpassed that of population – it is the Green Revolution that has lied to Paul Ehrlich’s pessimistic predictions about world hunger. Without high-quality varieties, there would be about 200 million more hungry people in the world today. The Green Revolution also helped reduce malnutrition and infant mortality.

The Green Revolution has undoubtedly enabled large increases in agricultural yields, but at the same time it has also created larger or even new problems, especially in the field of ecology. These ecological problems include soil degradation, for example due to salinisation, displacement of native plant species and thus a decrease in biodiversity, and environmental pollution by pesticides and mineral fertilizers.

Added to this is the dependence of local farmers, but also of developing countries as a whole, on multinational companies. In addition, in some regions at least, the disparity between rich and poor farmers increased significantly, as many poor farmers could not even afford chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Particularly in India, this led to countless small farmers losing their land or getting into debt with wealthy farmers.

Existing problems were exacerbated by the corona crisis and also by the war in Ukraine. The slump in global economic growth caused by the pandemic is likely to have increased poverty and malnutrition in the South; the Russian offensive war against Ukraine aggravated the situation considerably. In addition, the consequences of global warming are becoming increasingly clear, for example with the droughts in the Horn of Africa and recently in Madagascar.

Yet it is still the case that more food is produced worldwide than the world’s population actually needs. The problem with famine is almost always that the available food does not reach the hungry. About half of those who go hungry are small farmers who, being self-sufficient, do not have the means to buy enough food when they need it. The other half of those who go hungry are mainly landless rural workers and slum dwellers. Their poverty makes them vulnerable to famine.

A clear indication that hunger is primarily a distribution problem is the fact that, according to UN figures, 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted each year – about four times more than it would take to feed all the world’s hungry people to provide for their food supply. food. The 300 million tons a year thrown away in industrialized countries alone could feed all the starving people.