Word: bonner
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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What can the world expect during the next century as its population increases and its resources diminish? Last week in Manhattan three Caltech experts, Geochemist Harrison Brown, Biologist James F. Bonner and Psychologist John R. Weir, who have been studying this problem as a team, were optimistic-with qualifications...
Biologist Bonner took a hard, imaginative look at the world's future food supply. He points out that if all the carbon produced on earth by land plants (16 billion tons a year) were in edible form, it would feed 46 times the present human population; the carbon from cultivated lands alone is ten times as much as is needed. A large part of it is inedible stems, leaves, etc., and another large part is wasted by domestic animals or consumed by insects and other pests, but Dr. Bonner believes that with effort more of it could be made...
...likely to have much food trouble. Allowing for a reasonable improvement in agricultural methods, U.S. land can feed 400 million. The people will still eat well, but will not get quite as much meat. Most of the rest of the world will not fare as well, but Dr. Bonner believes that if all potentially arable land is cultivated intensively but still conventionally, about 7.6 billion people can have a passable diet...
Water the Desert. Dr. Bonner does not think much of chemical synthesis of food or growing algae in nutrient solutions. Much more promising, he believes, is the irrigation of the world's deserts by freshened sea water. Such agriculture will be expensive, but it can be done if the need is great enough. Another potential resource is the ocean. Wild fish will never be a really large source of food, and the microscopic vegetation of the sea is too dilute for easy harvesting. But Dr. Bonner thinks that some algae-eating animal (a "sea-pig") may be domesticated...
Both Brown and Bonner qualify their optimism by pointing out the enormous amount of research, development and construction that must be invested in each new method of winning energy, minerals or food. To accomplish these things, says Psychologist Weir, the world will have to have peace, and free communication. I will also need more and better-trained scientists and engineers, for the future of the crowded earth will be determined by the quality of its technology...