In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Norman Borlaug, the agronomist who developed a more productive and sturdier wheat warned us that he had only given us a pause in the ongoing race between incessant human population growth and our capacity to produce more food. Recently, more than a hundred Nobel Prize laureates signed a similar warning: “we are not on track to meet future food needs, not even close.”
In her essay in the June 20, 2025, New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert comments on Borlaug’s work and his warning and reviews two new books on this theme.
In his book on “We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate” (Simon and Schuster), journalist Michael Grunwald investigates agricultural practices and technical processes that are intended to produce food without negative side effects. He finds that these projects fail to produce more food and often lead to greater environmental damage. For example, it takes a lot of light bulbs to replace the sun.
Vaclav Smil, in “How to Feed the World: The History and Future of Food” (Viking), works with statistics. For example, he reports on the impossible technical capacities that would be required to grow even one percent of the world’s current meat consumption and repeats the warning about trying to duplicate photosynthesis. Although the photosynthesis upon which our food supplies depends may be inefficient , it is so complex and fragile a system it is unlikely to be duplicated by humans.
Smil does point out that the world (and particularly the people of the United States) waste a huge amount of food. Not enough to save mankind but surely something to be ashamed of.
Link to Kolbert article if you subscribe to the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/30/do-we-need-another-green-revolution
Link to Washington Post Review of Grundwald’s book: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/01/climate-agriculture-carbon-michael-grunwald/
Review of Smil’s book by Bill Gates: https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/how-to-feed-the-world