Thomas Malthus (1776-1834) was one of the early
theorists of the effects of population growth.
His theory, summed up in his own words, is that “The power of population
is indefinitely greater than the power of earth to produce subsistence for
man”.
The growth in economic development and agricultural
production since his time has been used as a major argument against the
correctness of the theory. But there are
various streams of thought on this, and it is still a matter of academic and
popular contention.
But as our population soars ever upwards towards
seven billion—it was calculated as being only one billion in 1804, during
Malthus’s lifetime—one thing is clear, the economic structure of societies, and
indeed the world economy itself, has become ever more complex, dangerously so,
to the extent that it has come to have something of the intricacy of a
mechanical clock: stick a screwdriver into its workings at any random point,
and the chances are that the whole thing may come to a halt.
Ireland is overall a net exporter of food, so that
should some crisis of upheaval affect, say, the Eurozone, then Ireland should
still be comfortably self-sufficient. But is this necessarily true?
Writing of the
effects of the collapse of the Austrian currency in the early 1920s, and
quoting from Adam Fergusson’s 1975 book, When
Money Dies, the economics correspondent Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote
several years ago:“Near civil war between town and country was a pervasive feature of this break-down in social order. Large mobs of half-starved and vindictive townsmen descended on villages to seize food from farmers accused of hoarding. The diary of one young woman described the scene at her cousin’s farm.
“In the cart I saw three slaughtered pigs. The
cowshed was drenched in blood. One cow had been slaughtered where it stood and
the meat torn from its bones. The monsters had slit the udder of the finest
milch cow, so that she had to be put out of her misery immediately. In the
granary, a rag soaked with petrol was still smouldering to show what these
beasts had intended,’ she wrote.”
As I say, Ireland might be expected to be
self-sufficient in food in the event of any crisis—but only if the type of
panic described above was avoided, otherwise the very basis of a continuous
agriculture could be put at risk.
Some twenty or so years ago, an article appeared in
one of the newspapers explaining that supermarkets in general held only a three
days stock of food. If that is the case,
then any interference, for whatever reason, in the complex organisation of food
distribution, in this or any country, could see the cities and towns descend
into chaos in a matter of a week, or even less.
Now none of these scenarios are necessarily
connected—yet taken together they are sufficient to give one pause for thought.
[This was originally written in June 2014.]
