Is it possible to feed the world's growing population and protect our environment?

In a New York Times editorial, author Verlyn Klinkenborg discusses our ever-growing population and how we're going to manage to feed it.

Here are a couple excerpts:

"According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, feeding humanity in 2050 — when the world’s population is expected to be 9.1 billion — will require a 70 percent increase in global food production, partly because of population growth but also because of rising incomes....."

"The question isn’t whether we can feed 9.1 billion people in 2050 — they must be fed — or whether we can find the energy they will surely need. The question is whether we can find a way to make food and energy production sustainable in the broadest possible sense — and whether we can act on the principle that our interest includes that of every other species on the planet...."

This editorial appeared just after I saw an announcement that Frances Moore Lappe will be speaking at in Geneva, NY in November.  Lappe is a democracy advocate and world food expert who has been working on these issues since the 1970s.

In Frances Moore Lappe's book, World Hunger: 12 Myths, she argues that there is enough food to feed the world and the choice between food or environmental quality is false.  

The question remains: how?

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FRANCIS MOORE LAPPE COMES TO HOBART WILLIAM SMITH NOV. 18th

Francis Moore Lappe, Democracy advocate and world food and hunger expert, will be delivering a talk on "Food, Finance and Climate Crises: Finding Common Roots, Searching For Solutions" on Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 7:30 – 9:30 p.m. at the Albright Auditorium, Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Frances Moore Lappé is the Co-founder of Food First: The Institute for Food and Development Policy and most recently of the Small Planet Institute, Author of “Diet for a Small Planet”, Recipient of the 1987 Right Livelihood Award

Lecture, followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Rodmon King of the HWS Philosophy Department.

Sponsored by the HWS Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Finger Lakes Institute, Campus Greens, Cornell University, Lakeview Organic Grain, and various HWS clubs and organizations.