Editor’s note: Marshall Brain – futurist, inventor, NCSU professor, writer and creator of “How Stuff Works” is a contributor to WRAL TechWire, taking a serious as well as entertaining world of possibilities for the world and the human race. He’s also author of “The Doomsday Book.”

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RALEIGH – Let’s imagine that all of us, the readers of this Techwire column, have been named caretakers of humanity on planet Earth. We give ourselves a name like The High Council on Global Human Wellbeing (HCGHW) because we have a big goal: to improve life for all humans across the planet. We meet once a week on Zoom, and we have a screen that acts as our dashboard into the current state of the world.

If the HCGHW were really to exist, then when we look at the dashboard this week, we would see several areas of the world flashing bright red. These are trouble-spots that deserve our attention right now.

  1. One trouble-spot: millions of people in the Tigray region of Ethiopia are facing starvation due to a food and medicine blockade into the area.
  2. Another trouble-spot is Afghanistan, where huge economic problems persist after the U.S. pull-out, and this week all high schools were closed to female students. Imagine a whole country (39 million people) where millions are hungry and where none of the girls can attend high school.
  3. Another trouble-spot: scientists are waving their arms frantically about extreme heating events that are occurring simultaneously at both of Earth’s poles right now. Potential issues surrounding these temperature extremes include more rapid sea level changes, thawing permafrost, and the potential for dangerously high spring and summer temperatures in the northern hemisphere.

These three areas, and several others, would be worth a look.

Ukraine invasion and food

Another trouble-spot that is getting significant press right now is the Ukraine crisis. The Ukrainian city of Mariupol is gone. Massive destruction in several other major Ukrainian cities has created approximately 3 million refugees (and rising) over the last month due to Russia’s aggression.

A doomsday scenario is unfolding in Ukraine – and we’re watching via live stream

Even worse: there are likely to be significant agricultural side-effects from the Ukraine crisis that unfold over the next year. The big concern is the global food supply and the effects that Russia, Ukraine and China might have on it. Toss in the wildcard coming from as-yet-unknown weather extremes during this year’s growing season, and the worst-case food scenario could become dire for up to a billion people on planet Earth.

To understand the potential food problem humanity faces this year, think about the world’s total population and then the world’s total food supply. We don’t normally ponder things at this scale, but the HCGHW needs to have this perspective. Consider:

  • In round numbers, the world’s human population today is about 8 billion people.
  • The average human weighs 136 pounds. This might seem low to those of us who live in North America, where the average is 178 pounds. But worldwide there are a lot of undernourished people along with a lot more children, so the global average is 136 pounds.
  • A healthy human diet requires a mix of grains, meats, nuts, fruits, vegetables, oils, etc.

If we assume that the average person eats a total of 3 pounds of food each day, then the world is eating 24 billion pounds of food every day (and this number ignores wasted and spoiled food). All of these different foods need to be raised, harvested, cleaned, prepared, transported, packaged and sold, to the tune of 24 billion pounds of food every single day worldwide.

The problem that the HCGHW is looking at now: what if one day there isn’t enough food for every human being on the planet? If the High Council is concerned about “Human Wellbeing” globally, we can’t really have tens of millions of people starving to death on our watch.

Food shortages might happen in one of two ways:

  1. What if food becomes so expensive that poorer people cannot afford to buy enough food? In other words, what if there is enough food to go around, but some people cannot afford it? In some poorer countries, people are already spending 50%, 60% even 70% of their meager income on food. As food gets more expensive, they can run out of money to buy it. For comparison, the average American spends 10% of income on food.
  2. What if one day there is only 23 billion pounds of food instead of the necessary 24 billion pounds for the day? Or what if it is 22 billion? Or 20? Under capitalism, without any government intervention, this shortage will express itself as extreme price increases. Poor countries simply will not have food at any price because rich countries will have the money buy it all up. We have seen this before – it happened with Covid vaccines in 2021.

Food shortage means …

What does humanity do if there is not enough affordable food to feed all of us?

The reason why this is becoming a concern is because of several factors that are spiraling together, many with their roots in the Russian war on Ukraine. We might think of Ukraine as a little country half a world away, but the war there is having global effects.

To understand the problem, let’s focus on just one global crop: wheat. In round numbers, the planet produces and consumes roughly 4 billion pounds of wheat per day. Wheat is becoming more expensive because:

  1. The price of fuel is rising because of sanctions on Russia and other factors. Farmers use fuel to plant, harvest, and transport wheat.
  2. The price of fertilizer is rising. Nitrogen fertilizer production often relies on natural gas, and natural gas prices are rising (especially in Europe) because of sanctions on Russia and other factors. Other fertilizer components are mined, and miners use fuel for mining and transportation. In addition, Russia and Belarus produce a good portion of the world’s fertilizer.

Significant wheat shortfalls may arise this year because:

  1. Without enough fertilizer, wheat harvests shrink. Wheat will still grow, but the crop is smaller with insufficient fertilizer.
  2. Ukraine is a top-10 producer of the world’s wheat. With Russia’s war on Ukraine underway, Ukrainian farmers are likely to produce less wheat. Russian bombs are also targeting food stocks in Ukraine.
  3. Russia is the #3 producer of the world’s wheat. Sanctions may stop Russian wheat exports, or Russia may withhold exports in retaliation for sanctions.
  4. China is the #1 producer of the world’s wheat. Flooding of China’s wheat farmland could reduce China’s wheat crop by up to a third this year.

And this is just one important global crop that is having problems.

How to fight back

Faced with the potential for food shortages planet-wide, what steps might the HCGHW take? Here are some possibilities:

  1. Quick regime change in Russia might help. With a different government, the Russian war on Ukraine might end quickly. This might reduce the need for sanctions and help world food and energy markets get back to normal.
  2. There is a lot of farmland in places like North America and Europe that is lying fallow. It could potentially be activated in an emergency fashion to produce crops. This would need to happen quickly though, since wheat is typically planted in the spring.
  3. Meat production could be reduced. It can take many pounds of grains to produce one pound of meat (depending on the type of meat – beef is the worst offender).
  4. Food could be rationed to overweight and obese people. This may sound extreme, but overweight people eat more than skinny people and they could also afford to lose a few pounds. We could take some food away from overweight people and give it to undernourished people. Having an overweight person feeling a little hungry is significantly better than having an undernourished person dying of starvation.

Right now, most humans on planet Earth do not tend to think globally like this. The HCGHW needs to think globally to avert a potential food catastrophe. This kind of global thinking can give us all a different perspective on what it means to be a human being.

The sourcing

Dear readers:

I am going to start including the links for all of the facts I include in my articles. For example, in this article I say that the average person on Earth weighs 136 pounds. How do I know that? I have a link below. 

Marshall Brain: Will we cure cancer?