Solutions on Food Crisis

Mankind’s eating problem is a great thing of course. Living without death might cause population explosion and shrinkage of per capita cultivated area with each passing day, then, will the people of that time have enough food to eat?

Mr. Lolin Clark, former dean of Agricultural Economy Academy of Oxford University said：Suppose all farmers have adopted the best farming method, the food they produce may be enough to meet the need of 35.1 billion people at the standard similar to American dietary standard, and such a population is equivalent to 7 seven times of the present world population. If we use the comparatively economical dietary standard of Japanese style, we might use the food to supply 21 times of the current world population. In the USA，farmers only account for 2.5% of the total population, but they can not only feed the people of their own country, but also export a lot of agricultural products to the world. Since they can use a little over 2 million farmers to produce food to feed 1／5 of the population of the world，why can’t other countries use only 2.5% of the population to solve their own food problem?          

US thinker and socialite Henry George used a metaphor to express the epistemological foundation on which many economists can reach consensus easily: “Both eagles and people eat chickens, but the more the eagles are, the fewer the chickens become, whereas the more people, the more chickens.” More and more scientists have come to realize：We have the ability to produce food at a speed higher than the speed of population growth. It reminds me of Malthus’ saying in his Malthusianism: “The growth of the population is in a geometric progression while the growth of food is an arithmetic linear growth，so, population growth will be faster than food growth”，thus, he concluded that “Mankind is bound to live in poverty and famine”. Nevertheless，two hundred years have passed after his saying, our life is not only free of poverty and famine，but is much richer and happier than two hundred years ago!

What is more important，by adopting biotechnology, we may free our agriculture from the bondage of the natural world, solving the grain problem very easily. In 1997，China released its No. 5 Report on National Condition, which forecast the grain problem of China in the 21st century. The report’s opinion is: “The final way out for China’s agriculture is the biological engineering.” Along with the development of high and new biotechnology, the future grain production will not depend on the land，but depend on the factory: In the factory alone, we will be able to produce food enough to meet mankind’s demand. Then, one pill, or one bean，way be equivalent to the nutrition of three meals a day.

By using the factory to produce food directly，we can save a lot of land，and hence we may optimize and beautify our earth according to the ecological law, so that every place will become a green homestead with a beautiful environment, agreeable climate, green mountains, clear waters and clean air, turning all parts of the world into places more beautiful and healthful than the famous five major longevity zones of the world.

Biotechnology is a good remedy for environmental protection. First, we may develop new species of crops without the need for pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers, so as to prevent environmental pollution；Second, we can do monitoring and rectifying for the already polluted environment. For example, scientists have used the gene engineering to work out a weed able to absorb heavy metals, so that all the harmful substances may gather into the weed. The environment after being treated by this grass will become very clean. So we can see, all big problems caused by eternal life that have worried so many people, such as the grain problem, the environmental problem and so on, may find the best solutions from science. In resources，we shall depend less and less on conventional resources such as ore, timber, metals and so on. All the high-tech products we need，such as the chip of the integrated circuit, rely on silicon as the raw material，and silicon is extracted from sand, which can be found everywhere. And the biotechnology as our major technology in future will use biotic resources, which are inexhaustible in fact.

In the measurable future，we may have the “technology that can solve the energy resource problem of the world thoroughly”, that is, the “technology of changing seawater into gasoline”. By using 1 liter seawater, the energy generated from the controlled thermonuclear fusion will be equivalent to 300 liter gasoline. Seawater can be considered as limitless; hence mankind will get an inexhaustible new energy.

The future era will be a “new solar era”，as the solar electric power generation has limitless potentials. According to scientists’ estimation，the energy from the sun illumination on the earth in 30 minutes is equivalent to all the electric power consumed by the world in a whole year. According to Qian Xuesen (famous Chinese scientist)’s calculation，on the 9.6 million square meters of land of China, the solar energy received in one year is equivalent to more than 1600 billion ton standard coal; If we install the devices for conversion of solar energy into electric energy on 1/10 of the land, calculated according to the energy conversion rate 10%, we may get the energy equivalent to 16.5 billion ton standard coal in one year.

World renowned scholar Symon said：In talking of the future，it is unavoidable for people to worry about some “crises” such as resource depletion, environmental pollution and so on, but it is just these “crises” that are forcing mankind to look for new resources, new energy sources, and new “ways of survival”. If people had not met with the crisis of insufficient wild rabbits and root crops ten thousand years ago, maybe mankind would still be eating wild rabbits and root crops even today. He said，knowledge is the impetus to world progress，and only a lack of well-educated people and a lack of imagination constitute the impeding forces to world progress.

In the past，in the hunting and fishing civilization period，food crisis occurred for a time. In the agriculture civilization period，land crisis appeared for a time. In the industry civilization period，energy crisis took place for a period. All those crises have been overcome by mankind. Then, in the present time with the power of high technology becoming more and more magical, why can’t we overcome the crises to be brought about by our pursuit of eternal life?

Anything has both advantages and disadvantages, and you can never find anything that has only advantages without disadvantages. Automobile transport is very advantageous, but traffic accidents occur everyday, resulting in many deaths. The airplane is more advanced，but once an air crash happens, it will result in much more deaths. If we give up something that has a great value and benefit just because of its disadvantages, that will be just like giving up eating for fear of choking, which is never a wise choice, of course. Hence，never should we give up our research and exploration into this great undertaking of eternal life just because of some possible problems, or some worries and doubt caused by it! We must be wise people，must make clear whether the advantages are greater than the disadvantages or the opposite, and make clear where the advantages lie and where the disadvantages lie. Any in-depth analyses and research on the possible disadvantages are for finding out the solutions, so as to make the disadvantages “removable” and the troubles “soluble”.

Balzac engraved a motto in his walking stick: “I have broken obstacles one after another”. But Kaffka said: “Obstacles one after another have broken me”. While bringing about huge benefit, eternal life will also bring about obstacles one after another. The question only lies in: “Whether “we have broken the obstacles” or “the obstacles have broken us”. It depends on ourselves completely.