Volume 23, Number 2 · February 19, 1976
Myths of the Food Crisis
By Nick Eberstadt
Give Us This Day…A Report on the World Food Crisis
by the Staff of The New York Times
Arno, 336 pp., $10.00
Food: Politics, Economics, Nutrition and Research
edited by Philip H. Abelson
American Association for the Advancement of Science (Washington, DC), 202 pp., $4.95 (paper)
How little we know about the world food problem is frightening. There are really no accurate figures on food production for any poor country; the margin of error in the estimate for India alone could feed or starve twelve million people. Nutritionists' estimates of the 'average' daily adult protein requirement have ranged from 20 grams a day to over 120. Perhaps most astonishing, we do not know the world's population within 400 million people. In short, we do not know how much food there is, how much food people need, or even how many people there are.
Review, 6653 words
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