How to Feed the World

"How to Feed the World

By Vaclav Smil

Viking, 272 pages, $30

With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. installed as the Health and Human Services secretary, the U.S. food system is set to face intense scrutiny from policymakers in both parties.

Americans today are saddled with high rates of obesity and the chronic diseases it triggers.

At the same time, new wonder drugs have become available that have helped millions of Americans shed weight.

Entering the discussion is Vaclav Smil, the author of "How to Feed the World," which provides big-picture perspective on the global food system -- covering history, nutrition, economics, agronomy and much else. The book's title might suggest that Mr. Smil is the latest in a long line of thinkers -- dating back to Thomas Malthus in 1798 -- to predict that the world is on the precipice of food shortages. Instead, he cites reams of evidence to show that famine is not imminent. He also points out that Malthus became less pessimistic after a few years and cheekily observes that "Malthus was not a 'Malthusian' after all."

Mr. Smil, a professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba, has been writing about food for five decades. He has also produced more than 40 books about topics encompassing energy, the environment and demographics. He describes "How to Feed the World" as "a focused, strongly quantitative evaluation of the basics" of the global food system and starts out by imagining how humans would function in a world without farming.

One scenario would have humans follow the daily routine of chimpanzees, who spend valuable time and energy searching for different foods, with an emphasis on fruits. If humans had to do this, says Mr. Smil, the consequences would be dire: "It is hard to imagine how an existence centered on fig-picking would eventually lead to writing, the Parthenon, and antibiotics."

The onset of farming about 12,000 years ago, Mr. Smil writes, created a more stable food supply, which in turn curtailed the need for daily foraging and enabled people to converge in areas that eventually became cities. "Today's global civilization," he says, "rests, undoubtedly, on edible grains. Their cultivation was -- and remains -- our only option."

Moving to the present day, Mr. Smil brings sober analysis to the global food system and suggests "incremental changes" that he thinks can help to meet future challenges. He argues that in much of the world the problem is not too little food but too much, which leads to high rates of food waste.

Mr. Smil proposes that restaurants reduce portion sizes, which in the U.S. have grown sharply over the decades, in part because there's little marginal cost increase associated with larger servings. He also recommends reducing the volume of food produced, which in many countries greatly exceeds what is needed to feed their populations, as well as limiting consumer choice: "There is surely no need for American supermarkets to carry 40,000-50,000 different items of food," he writes.

As these ideas suggest, Mr. Smil doesn't seem to care about the popularity or feasibility of his proposed solutions. And he is skeptical that humans will modify their eating habits -- particularly when it comes to vegan or paleo diets. The author claims he is not focused on the kind of innovations we're often told will revolutionize the food system, but he nonetheless spells out why some of them are flawed or destined to fail.

He eviscerates organic farming as "the most radical of all unlikely solutions aimed at securing enough food by the mid-century." Synthetic fertilizers are not permitted under organic-farming standards. But banning them, Mr. Smil notes, would mean being unable to feed 40% of humanity. And yields on organic crops tend to be 25% lower than conventional ones, which translates into needing to farm much more land.

Another much-cited accusation against the present food system is that it contributes to climate change. Mr. Smil mostly steers clear of the connection. But he expresses a contrarian view about the rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. More carbon dioxide, he says, has benefited plants and "resulted in indisputable biospheric greening."

Portions of "How to Feed the World," written in spare and data-heavy prose, are likely to lose the casual reader -- there's a dense chapter, for instance, devoted to the complexities of photosynthesis.

There are also major omissions, such as any discussion of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic or Wegovy, which are now being taken by up to 12% of American adults.

Users of those drugs are eating less and eating healthier, which has the potential to upend the global food system.

It would have been enlightening to hear Mr. Smil's thoughts on the topic.

The author also glosses over what is the most pressing issue with the world's food supply and a big, fat target for Mr. Kennedy: the way in which it has contributed to high rates of disease, disability and death.

One comprehensive study has found that diet is responsible for nearly 20% of the world's premature mortality. Surely that merits some discussion in a book about the global food system.

Mr. Smil declares: "I am not a pessimist or an optimist, I am a scientist." But he tends toward optimism and believes there's going to be enough food for the global population beyond 2050. And after that? He predicts that a combination of declining population and scientific progress will enable the world's food needs to be met. Malthus would likely agree.

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Mr. Rees is the founder of Geonomica, a senior fellow at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and the editor of Food and Health Facts." [1]

 Each of us now builds the Parthenon every day and invents antibiotics, with a 1 in 5 chance of dying from the food we eat. Chimpanzees eat natural food and don't have this problem. What a sacrifice we have made for the sake of civilization. And cockroaches, who will be the only ones to survive the end of our civilization, will have a very green Earth because of the global heat and the abundance of carbon dioxide in the air that we have caused. Beautiful.

1.  Feast Or Famine. Rees, Matthew.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 10 Mar 2025: A15.