Answer: Scientific and technical advances in agriculture have yielded an era in which harvests are now outpacing population growth, resulting in unprecedented food abundance.
From 1960 to 1986, the amount of land on which grain was planted grew by less than 11 percent. Yet in the same period, improvements in crops and planting practices caused grain harvests to more than double. This year, grain production will total roughly 1.66 billion metric tons, according to the Department of Agriculture.
This is not to say that all people are well fed. Africa provides grim reminders that the world has not solved its hunger problem. Inefficient distribution of food and inequities in income leave many without enough to eat. But today hunger is less the result of absolute food shortages than of political situations and policy decisions.
Moreover, many experts say the era of abundance has brought widespread economic disruption among farmers in the United States and in other nations dependent eon farm exports. But Robert Paarlberg, a political scientist Harvard University, is among those who believe this disruption is due more to food distribution problems and slow income growth in the underdeveloped countries than to abundant production.