Tke Earth's popwlation is alrnost certain

to dowble in the next century, no lnatter

what actions nations take to cwrb the

population explosiom. Bwt a United

P[lPU
DQ
IIt
oom-mongers, demographers, greens, feminists,
politicians, clerics and dogooders of all kinds converged on Cairo this week
to point the world toward a woman-empowering, population-limiting, povertyreducing, growth-enhancing, environment-protecting future. These worthy
goals, incorporated in a 2}-year action
program, will almost certainly be endorsed by some 160 countries at the

United Nations' International Conference on Population and Development,

the third of its kind, broadened this time

to include all things conducive to stabilizing the world's population.

Conferees will also debate whether or
not the growing baby boom is leading to
mass starvation and an environmental
apocalypse (stories, Pages 57 and 63).

But a high-decibel attack by the Vatican and its newfound Islamic allies on
what they consider an agenda for immorality and permissiveness is upstaging the formal proceedings. From a Cai-

ro

mosque last week, one preacher

called the meeting"a Zionist and imperialist plot to destroy Islam."

In the face of the

fundamentalist

storm, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Lebanon have withdrawn their delesations.

and Saudi Arabia's religious" chief.

10il
y##;:#;M.ff#,!:;:r"
::;';:rxT;!f;;";,:::::; ;:,Y:1,

Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz bin Baz, has

called on all Muslim nations to join the
boycott. Trvo of the three women who
rule Muslim states, Khaleda ZiaofBangladesh and Tansu Ciller of Turkey,
along with Queen Noor of Jordan, have
dropped out. Theworld center of Islamic
scholarship, Cairo's Al- Azhar University, has denounced the conference action
plan as un-Islamic, though Egypt's grand
mufti finds it 90 percent acceptable.
Security in Cairo has been getting
tighter by the day since the militant and
murderous Islamic Group warned the
20,000 participants in "the licentiousness conference" that their lives are at
risk. Egypt's embattled President Hosni
Mubarak, who lobbied hard to host the
meeting, has been broadcasting assurances that anything un-Islamic will be
rejected and that, anlnvay, conference
prescriptions are not binding.
The Clinton administration is takins a
similar line in an effort to salvase t:he
fracturing consensus and propitiate in-

dignant clerics as well as religious voters

at home. Vice President Al Gore, who is
leading the U.S. delegation to Cairo,
scheduled a last-minute speech at the
National Press Club two weeks aso to
stress America's concern for prote*cting
the sovereign right of governments to set
their own population policies. He also

PHOTOILLUSTRATIONSBYDOUGSTERNANDDAVIDS.|ERRILL-USN&WR
PHOTOS:NASA-STOCKBOSTON:N.4ISHAERWITT
JOHNM.ROBERTS-THESTOCKMARKFT:AFP;CRISPINHUGHES-ll\4PACTV|SUALS;JOHNNORDELL
JBPTCTURES

MAGNUT\,1

insisted that "the United States has not

sought, does not seek and will not seek to
establish any international right to an

abortion."

A Vatican official,

however,
later leveled an unusual public attack on
Gore, accusing him of covering up a U.N.
policy of abortion on demand.
Backing family planning. At the last

U.N. population conference, in Mexico

Cityl0years ago, the Reagan administration led an antiabortion charse. This

time, the United States is sidlng with
advocates of full-service family planning,
with safe,legal abortion as an emergency

backup. Indeed, although abortion is

now the most widely practiced form of
birth control in the world and is leeal in
I72 countries, the draft plan rules out

\r
'r',

',il

l*'

tu

it for family planning, using

the very language which was adopted, on
Reaganite insistence, in Mexico City.

promoting

The passions of America's abortion

wars will be surfacine in Cairo this week
less because of grasJ-roots antiabortion
feeling than because of politicking by
the Roman Catholic Church. Opposition to abortion is the movins force in a
Vatican crusade that beean Tast March
with papal rebukes to tfie head of the
U.N. Population Fund, President Clinton and the other world leaders, asserting that contraception, sterilization and
abortion are all "an assault on the sacredness of life."
In April, Vatican envoys carried out a
Jesuitical deconstruction of the draft

..' .i
l=

program, targeting every reference to

sexual or reproductive health and any-

thing else that smacked of sexual permissiveness. This led to semantic hairsplitting whereby "family planning" is
sometimes acceptable, sometimes not,

but "fertility regulation" is always a nono; "maternal health" gets through but
not that most apple pie of concepts,
"safe motherhood."

Muslims played almost

no part

in

these doctrinal debates, even though

the action plan includes sweeping assJrtions of women's rights, which many Islamic countries deny. But then the Vatican started secretly seeking allies. Libya
and Iran revealed that they were obiects

of Vatican lobbying including, Tripoli

claimed, offers to intervene in the dispute with the United States and Britain
over extraditing the alleged bombers of
a Pan Am jet. Since then, other Vatican
feelers to Islamic sovernments and
groups have come

tolight.

Both priests and mullahs abhor nonmarital sex, nontraditional families, homosexuality, adolescent sex education
and abortion. Unlike the Vatican. Al-

Azhar exempts abortion to save a

mother's life and even runs family
planning clinics. Islam has no fixed

World Bank reckons, would mean 12.2

billion people by the end of the next
century; a rapid decline would result in
9.3 billion. The U.N. plan for Cairo
aims to set the world on the lower trajectory. Creating the economic and so-

cial conditions in which more parents

would choose to have smaller and better-spaced families, says demographer
Bongaarts, could reduce the world's
population at the end of the 21st century by a billion more.

doctrine on population growth. But

some Islamic groups proclaim

that Muslims should be

"Women's empowerment works." The

U.N. plan urges equality for women in
all spheres of life as "a highly important

end in itself" and "essential for the

achievement of sustainable development" as well as "the long-term success

of population programi." The plan
even calls for reducing women's -'extreme responsibitities wittr regard to
housework." Coercive birth control,

genital mutilation and sex-selective

abortion are all up for banning.

k'

*',

seeking to increase their

population "to the highest t
'};

level possible" - an inyour-face refutation both

of the conference theme

and of the policies of many

Muslim governments. The
Vatican does not preach

un-

limited growth; it accepts

the need for "responsible

'i

parenthood." Still, the pope

reportedly was outraged in

June when 80 lay scientists
from the Pontifical Academy
of Sciences concluded that
sustaining birthrates above

two children per couple

is

"unthinkable."
lowering birthrates, Clerical
dictates, like many secular
ones, clearly have

little impact

on the behavior of the flocks.

Italy and Spain, two of the most
heavily Catholic countries, have
the lowest birthrates in Western

\ru
t'r'

Europe, while the two largest

Muslim countries, Indonesia

and Bangladesh, have model

Ftf

family planning programs. Even

holier-than-thou Iran has a strons

family planning effort. Surveys

show that up to 120 million married
women, many of them Catholic and
Muslim, want to limit or space their
children but lack safe and effective
means of doing so. Providing these
women with contraceptives could hold
back population growth by nearly 2 billion over the next 100 years, says demographer John Bongaarts.

Even though a total

of 350 million

couples, or 45 percent of married people, do not now practice birth control,

making modern contraception more

available cannot prevent the world's

population from almost doubling in the

next century (graph, Page 58). But after
that, projections vary greatly, depending on the pace at which fast-growing
developing countries lower their birthrates. A slow decline in fertilitv. the

LL,
In addition, Columbia University epidemiologist Deborah Maine estimates
that satisfying the unmet demand for
family planning could cut the number
of maternal deaths, now 500.000 a vear.
by about 150,000. It would also 6ring
about a sharp drop in the 50 million
abortions a year, which account for at
least 60,000 deaths.

The slogan made famous at the first

U.N. population conference in 1974 was

"Development is the best contraceptive." This was the developing coun-

tries' retort to Western pleas for stricter

population control measures. The Cairo
gathering's bumper sticker might be

PHOTOS: (LEFD SEAN SPRAGUE-IN4PACTVtSUALS; SANTOSH BASAK-GAMt\,4Al LIAISON; DAVTD BURNETT_CONTACTI

ALON REININGER-CONTACT (RtcHT) NASA-STOCK BoSTON; CHUCKO'REAR-WEST LrGHT

Feminists, who played a large part in

drafting the plan, could hardly ask for
more. But they will swing into angry action if they think too many concessions
are being made to the religious right,
for example by diluting the definition
and centrality of reproductive rights
and reproductive health or barring access to family planning for the unmarried. Some radical feminist groups intend to hold mock trials in Cairo of the
World Bank, the U.N. Population Fund
and International Planned Parenthood
for oppressing women through coercive
birth control programs. All women's

groups want

to keep the focus on

U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, SEFT|EMBER 12,Igg4

-t
i

choice. If this seems threatened, some

will be prepared to see the conference

WORID REPORT

come crashing down.

The real measure of success in Cairo

will not lie in the fine print. In fact, the

Vatican's semantic cleansing last spring
was not very thorough. Even if all the

contested phrases are removed - and

they amount to less than 8 percent of
the text-the action plan will remain a
clarion call for a social revolution to

raise the status of women and link population stabilization to development

and environmental protection. But the
clerical attack can still do serious damage. U.N. documents are only as binding as governments allow them to be,
and if the conferees in Cairo beein
abandoning the reforming thrust of t-he
program in the face of clerical opposition, some governments will feel free to

revert to their old misogynist ways. Others, deprived of the cover of interna-

tional consensus, will yield to the con-

of a head-on

clash

Witk technology andfree trade, the trarth can defy tke

doornsayers-andfeed twice as rnany people
s the United Nations
conference on population convenes this week

avirtual S
Earth's i
population is about to surpass 'ffi.-+
in Cairo, it has become

article of faith that the

servative pressures at home.

Saving grace: saving money. Another

casualty

10 BILLI(|N F(lR
DIilNER, PLENSE

the planet's "carrying capacity."

in

Cairo
could be the financins of the action
plan. The full packagJof family planning and reproductive health for developing countries and former Communist
states has been priced at $17 billion in
2000. Universal primary education, a vital adjunct, would cost an additional $5

A saving
grace is the proved cost-effectiveness of
both family planning and girls' educa-

Ecological collapse looms; the only

hope is an aggressive effort to reduce

runaway birthrates. Lester Brown, presi-

dent of the Worldwatch Institute, says

the "day of reckoning" has already arrived as soil erodes, aquifers empty, pesticide pollution spreads and range lands

s'
ffi{he"
hffi
ffi
ffi
ffitRw

are overgrazed.

"I personally do

not tnmK we are ever gomg to

get close" to a world population of 10 billion, Brown- told

ffip Committee
th. Senate
$ppropriations
earlier thisyear. The
.

ri'!r4* reason? "Ecosvstems are alreadv

starting to break down," he

peared earlier this year in the Atlantic

Monthly. The piece, written by foreign
correspondent Robert Kaplan, envisions

billion to $6 billion a year.

tion.

dollar spent today will

save

many more down the road.

Two thirds of the $17 billion is to

come from user countries and the remaining third from donors. This translates into a doubling of current spending by the poor and a sixfold increase by
the rich. Japan, Canada, Britain, Australia, the Nordic countries and the European Union have already pledged to
up their aid. The United States, which
has budgeted $585 million for population support to 75 countries in
1995, is closer to meetine the U.N.
target than all other countries except
the Nordic nations and the Netherlands, although Washington would
still need to treble its aid by 2000.
The immediate challenge, however, is averting a meltdown in Cairo.
"Never underestimate the Vatican's
ability to intimidate politicians,"
warns population consultant Sharon Camp. "If the Americans show

some leadership, we have more

clout than the Vatican does. Still,

this is a fight the White House

doesn't

need."

By EITTTy

MACFARQLTHAR

U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPOK|. SEPTEMBER I2.Igg4

Econornics

of

fh_=,ffilii#?r,.,li,ffi

historic

and a
280
240
200
160

says.

Even President Clinton has joined the

neo-Malthusian bandwagon; he was riveted by an apocalyptic jeremiad that ap-

I WORLD REPORT

for International Development

has
been cutting funding for agricultural research for a decade; last year its contributions to international agricultural research programs fell by almost one

third. Boosting farm production was not

even on the U.S. agenda for Cairo.

Reducing birth rates is clearly an urgent priority if the world population is

to have even a chance of stabilizing at
twice current numbers. But even the
most draconian birth control efforts

cannot prevent Earth's population

from almost doubling (see graphic,
"Population Momentum," left). And
that creates an unprecedented challenge that can be met only by increas-

ing food production.

Gheap food. Despite the doomsayers, agricultural production is still on a

lact tnat the worlcl pnce oI Iood nas

been declining for the past 50 years.
Since 1970, it has dropped by one half
in real terms, hardly what one would
expect of a dwindling resource.
The growth in world grain production has slowed in the last four years.
But by falsely attributing that slow-

down

to technological or

resource

limits, environmentalists have greatly exaggerated the obstacles to fui; ture yield improvements. Grain is in
and 46 million acres of U.S.
$ surplus,
r^-l^r^--r
11*:r:^.^
"d* farmland
^-) ll
and
million acres :-in E,Europe have been deliberately idled
under government programs to boost
farmers'incomes. Close to 200 million

of South American

a world of growing chaos, anarchy, disease and corruption as hungry refugees

ronmental damage and ensure that re-

acres

sources reach the peoplewho need them.

surge across borders in search of food

and nations fight over scarce resources.

Indeed, embracing the myth of environmental scarcity could ironically prompt

the United States and other countries to

could be brought into production

mand, and free trade, permitted.

Humanitarian disasters such as the one

in Rwanda are a herald of the new era of
resource limits.

But

if

these apocalyptic prophecies

come true, it will not be simply because
man has been too fruitful and has been
multiplying too fast. True, Rwanda was
the most densely populated country in
Africa before the current civil war erupted. But its Hutu and Tutsi peoples are
battling over tribal hatreds and political

power, not resources: Rwanda was

about to reap a copious harvest when
the killing started.
The realthreat. Recent scientific stud-

ies confirm that the Earth's basic re-

de-

Total food production, meanwhile,

continues to grow much faster than pop-

adopt policies that virtually guarantee

ulation. Per capita world food output

grew by 5 percent during the 1980s. "The

conference by groups such as Zero Pop-

ulation Growth, the Pew Global Stewardship Initiative and a coalition of environmental and other organizations
called the U.S. Network for Cairo 1994,
focus almost exclusively on population
control: They argue that further major
increases in food production are not

planet by the middle of the next century.

The real threat is not that the Earth will

run out of land, topsoil or water but that
nations will fail to pursue the economic,
trade and research policies that can increase the production of food,limit envi-

grain production as proof that the era

of rapid technological progress "has
slowed to a trickle."
The U.S. government has also been
heading in this direction. The Agency

who are almost certain to inhabit the

if

that the apocalyptic future that environmentalists foretell really does come true.
The conventional solutions to the
world food problem, heavily publicized
in the months leading up to the Cairo

possible. "Achieving a humane balance

between food and people now depends
more on family planners than on farmers," says Worldwatch's Brown, who
cites an apparent drop-off in per capita

sources are vastly greater than what are

needed to feed even the 10 billion people

savanna also

PHoToS: BRUCE DALE-NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY: BALDEV SYGlvlA

r WORLD REPORT

cesses of the Green Revolution have

come principally from a worldwide network of agricultural research centers

world has not reached, nor is it near, the

upper limits

tists over the last two years. U.S. aid for

foreign agricultural programs has been

that operate under the Consultative

Group on International Agricultural

of production

capacity,"
says B. H. Robinson of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. With sufficient invest-

on a steep decline, falling by

economist Dennis Avery of the Hudson

Institute told a Senate committee earlier
thisyear, the Earth should readilybe able
to feed 10 billion people.
A recent study by Paul Waggoner of

acre. New varieties now under development concentrate an extra L0 percent of

their energy into developing their grainI

the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven backs up the

claim that food production is for the foreseeable future limited only by human in-

genuity. not natural resources. The gross

productive potential of the Earth - setby
available land, climate and sunlight for

phoros.v-nrhesis-is sufficignl.!o pioduce

iood for a staggering 1,000 billion neode.

I
|

orr.th_-sharrr^^,

,#il;:*:::YbSV

s*,?i,i"+",,i6i,*J{"j;1ff*ffi,
3o"drdK:!L??f,5[3Jsl:
ableferti1izerproduc^tio1i-pli:l?.Tpt"|#tneoestrarirers.
trfJ 33;ffr i1'J}ilf;;'

'"lffJiii,Li,3:ii:?'"',?1,T;:fl

If the world is to feed its doubling

population, nations also must remove agricultural trade barriers - another policy
that many environmental groups and developing nations are working to thwart.
In the conventional wisdom, curbing the
"excess consumption" of Western coun-

The International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, for example,

developed genetically improved strains
of rice that have doubled yields per

in asricultural research and the

removal of trade barriers, agricultural

three

quarters since 1980.

Research (CGIAR).

ments

R",3ili*",i:

in their research budget has helped, but

the centers have already lost 100 scien-

l,|

?l',':fl

yield gatns
gains ls
is demondemonfurther yteld
tial for turther
ttal

rc

,.:,,r."

_E

Western dio+

r^-

;ie;ilinresspe
,;;;X,J yrerd

using

vu, I sf ,r CrOpland)

10 tons

. . .-.

9 tons
8 tons

t.

."

of |1,,,*',tt
ur
..
..,'' i'.
from l, ,, _
I. ,.i -i'
if;i'
'
qenetic \/llSrrruur
futuristic
roLr!
other ruLur
rrrS vr
or vlrrvr
engineering
, i'
i:,, r . 15
5\/rl|ru
.ll .,, ,, .
4i"" ^{/i
I
technologies, corn yields per acre are
',
'JF:
:.
.: iiv ,,,,' ,
'
I to 2 percent a year-de- :,1,.','-.
increasing
increasingiro2percentayear-dc-i-.u:|,.^.''.-.....]Y.,...
't;i:$Uft;e"Slu^,,j1i.,' ,' l,,'.;'.,
spite the lact that yields ha.ve already r'ti.''.j''ffillefpii?:,.ij.'
't' 'r r.'
"'''
,'i ',t.'," ,,...'.,
.t
",
intenl ''.i';115
of 10 since inteni'Y;:;i:i'f,r'"i''l',"
increased by a factor onO
. ,,
"'','
'-ffiln$"xiil='

case
in the
tlrs uasc
dramatically ur
most Oramatlt,arly
strated mOSt
SIfateO

corn. Without any contribution

'

itl: ['"',1'&:

?li";l,ffir; :f,:I,T

have played out, corn should

have," i

':';;"";"

j
natptr Hardy, president of Cor- ,,,',,.,'
nell University's Boyce Thompson '.i:' i Institute, a leading center of plant l, ,, ., , .,
biotechnology research. The high- ;'"1:,' ,a11
" ;ul
.
est corn yields achieved each year
t'1..'

says

il:lff : "i[ jr xi J r tu! T]",r

creasing at a rate of 125 pounds

"

d;'#;l
r'i:'-"j;i'

each year, morb than

double the average world gain.
Whether worldwide yields can
continue to increase at the same
rate - as they must if 10 billion people
are to be fed - depends not on the ecological carrying capacity of Spaceship
Earth, agricultural researchers argue,
but on something more prosaic: money
to fund continuing research and development of new te6hnologies, and credit
and technical assistance io that farmers
in the developing world can apply the
technologies that already exist. It would
be impoJsible to feed the world's current population with the technology of
30 yeari ago - at least without a devastating impact on the environment. And
for three^ decades, the remarkable suc-

p". u.i"

PHOTO: CHUCK PEFLEY ALLSTOCK

'':t

Council for Aoa

roi,,,N

ii,

il

| bearing seed heads and add characterisI tics such as drought, flood, _salt and pest
I resistance that can further boost yields.
| "The only reason we've had these

tries goes hand in hand with population

I ternational Food Policy Research InstiI tute. "It's been fine up until now o4y
| because people with foresight did the
I right thing." But funding for the
| CGIAR centers has begun falling. _A reI cent infusion of cash from the World
I Bank to make up a $55 million shortfall

world trade in spreading the wealth have

been "overwhelmed" by its tendency to
encourage "unsustainable consumption
by creating the illusion of infinite sup-

| large yield increases is that we've made

Per
| g.rE" investments in the past," says
I Pinstrup-Anderson, director of the In-

control; many environmental activists

link high-yield agriculture, affluence,
free trade and technological advancement with environmental devastation. A
recent Worldwatch Institute report, for
example, complains that the benefits of

plies." Under Secretary of State for

Global Affairs Timothy Wirth, who
headed U.S. planning for the Cairo conU.S.NEWS & WORLD REPOKT, SEPTEMBER 12,1994

I WORLD REPORT
ference, has echoed this theme, promis-

iirg "to take on the difficult issue of

wasteful resource consumption and the

similarly disproportionate share of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, the

truth is that the United States and oth-

disproportionate impact the developed

rvorld has on the Earth's environment."
Reducing the environmental strains
caused by thc profligate use of resources -- whercver it occurs - is only
common sense. But given the world sur-

er advanced countries use far less energy and produce far less carbon dioxide
per dollar of GDP added to the world's
economy. They also have, for the most
part, far more stringent environmental
policies than many developing nations.
Perverse subsidies. In India, for example, the government provided farmers

mani- experts say it is ludicrous to blame

them to overpump water, leading to sali-

plus of -eraitt and falling food prices,

with free electricity, which encouraged

son Institute calls "the best and safest

acres." Soils in tropical climates are extremely poor in inherent fertility; the
most environmentally sound way to increase world food production rapidly is

to expand it in places where the soils

can sustain it and where high-yield
technologies and good transportation

are already available-which means the

world's temperate zones.
A free market would discourage inef-

ficient food production on farmland

hacked out of tropical rain forests. Yet
policies

of

"self-sufficiency"

New tecnnologies are breaking

and protectionism encourage

just such environmentally unsound and unsustainable policies. Indonesia, for example,

and resource consumotion

tropical forest to grow

Mo-re food fiom

fewer resoutces

is clearing 1.5 million acres of

soy-

the iirrk between food production

beans for chicken feed at a

cost above the world price;
India produces milk at two to

@ soil

Coriventional plowing leaves bare

soii exoosed to erosion. "No-till"
i-rianters cut only a narrow slit
through sod and crop residues,
drastically reducing erosion.

three times the world price.

On the other hand, many na-

tions that have made the

transition from agricultural
to industrial economies are

@ fertilizer

far from "self-sufficient"; Japan, for example, imports

three fourths of its srain.
But most of all, iays Pinstrup-Anderson of the Inter-

"Precision farming" systems use

satellite maps of fields to control
the rate that seeds and feftilizers
are spread. By precisely
matching application rates to
local soil conditions, yields are
increased and waste is cut.

) onn

national Food Policy Research Institute: "It's not

intensive agriculture that's

Most olants are difficult to

causing environmental degra-

dation in the developing

rrranipulate with genetic

engineering. But a "gene gun"
that shoots new bits of DNA
directly into plant cells has
overcorne this barrier. New
varieties of barley that resist viral
diseases have been produced;
work is underway to modifl7 corn
plants genetically so that they
can play host to nitrogen-fixing
bacteria, reducing the need for
chernical fertilizers.

countries, it's

lack of it." Ad-

water, soil and energy required to produce a ton of

grain-breaking the link between economic srowth and
environmental imlact. While
poverty and a lack of intensive production methods have

the hunger that plagues parts of the

world on greedyWestern lifestyles. "This

is the Congregational Church syndrome," says Robert Repetto of the

World Resources Institute. "People

think if they bring some canned goods to

church on Sunday it will relieve world
hunser. It doesn't work that wav."
N4alrrutrition afflicts 700 million people not because the world does not produce enough tood but because poor nations do not have enough morrey to buy
it. Nor is the poverty of the Third
World sirnply a reflection of the rapa-

of the First World. Despite

the often-quoted statistics about how
the United States consumes one quarciousness

ter of the wor ld's energy and produces

vanced intensive methods of

cultivation have dramatically
reduced the amount of land,

nization and waterlogging of soils. The

clearing of Brazilian rain forests and the
farming of these fragile soils have likewise been heavily encouraged by government subsidies. In fact, manli of the
most publicized crises in agricultural
production - salt-clogged soils, overpumped aquifers, eroding soils - reflect
not fundamental resource limits but bad
resource management. "The most important element driving the conversion
[of forest to farming] is lack of jobs,"
says Repetto -not lack of food.
Far from encouraging environmental
devastation, freer trade in agriculture

could actually help ensure that in-

forced millions of Third World farmers

to overgraze marginal range land or plow
up steep hillsides with primitive methods, modern techniques such as "no-till"
farming that have been widely adopted in
developed countries have cut soil erosion

rates dramatically

- often virtually to

-while boosting yields significantly.

"I'm an optimist, no question about
it," says Pinstrup-Anderson. But his
optimism is tempered by the knowledge

zero

that solutions to the world's food problem will not simply drop into our lapsespecially given current policy directions. "Complacency is our enemy." he
says. So is fatalism.

creased food production is concentrat-

ed on what Dennis Avery of the Hud-

Bv STBpHBN BtnlqNsr<v
U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPOKI, SEPTEMBER I2,I994