Today we turn to the food supply component of cycle of prosperity. At the core of the food supply is crop production. With the exception of what few hunting and gathering methods are still used, most food comes from domesticated crops or animals that feed on crops.
Historically, food supply has been directly related to arable land. With no means of improving production within in a fixed area, the only way to accommodate a growing population was through acquiring more land. Rev. Malthus’ analysis that population can expand far more rapidly then the food to sustain it was quite accurate.
Apart from population growth there were other persistent threats to adequate food supply. Droughts, floods, and other natural disasters could severely disrupt food supplies for extended periods. War and civil unrest could also radically reduced crop production. Periods of starvation and want were accepted as part of normal human existence.
Even where food supply was somewhat stable, the food stuffs available in any given society were frequently incapable of delivering the caloric and nutritional intake necessary to conduct the vigorous year round activity we engage in today. As we will see in the next post, increased and improved food supply is one of the most significant factors in the development of human capital.
The primary input into the food supply is technology. As we saw in the last post, innovations in everything from crop rotation, to irrigation, to fertilizer, to seed selection and modification, to machine power, to more efficient transport methods, to advances in refrigeration and packaging, and a myriad of other innovations, have of all contributed to expansion of modern food supplies. It has been advances in this technology, every bit as much as industrialization, which has made possible the escape from the Malthusian trap.
Markets have led to an incredibly high level of coordination and synchronization of food production and distribution, thus making both the production and consumption more efficient. Trade has made possible the net exchange of non-food items for food items possible for societies that are week in agricultural resources and created income for societies that have abundant agricultural resources by selling food.
We turn next to human capital.