The ability to increase food production from unconventional sources does exist, however, is it attractive from an economic point of view?Productivity Analysis,

Francis, F.J.

English

Research Papers in Economics

PRODUCTIVITY FOR THE FUTURE: FOOD PRODUCTION
by
F. J. Francis
Department of Food Science and Nutrition
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts
The ability to increase food
production from unconventional sources
does exist, however, is it attractive
from an economic point of view?
I would like to talk this afternoon
on the topic of “Food Production”. This
infers a discussion of what we consider
traditional methods of food production
plus unconventional sources which may
enter the food stream in the future.
This is a very big topic, and obviously,
I can only deal with the highlights in
the time allocated to me. First of all,
we should consider what we mean by in-
creased food production. What we really
mean is the possibilities of increasing
food production in a manner which is
attractive from an economic point of
view. I think we should be very real-
istic about this economic aspect, since
we can make food out of literally any-
thing of organic nature. We can liter-
ally take almost any organic material
and treat it either from a microbiolo-
gical point of view and transform it into
something of nutritional value. The
only question is--can we do it in a man-
ner which can compete with the econ-
omics of conventional food production.
Some of the ideas for increasing food
production from unconventional sources
have been pretty far out, which really
means that maybe our society isn’t quite
ready for some of these suggestions yet.
I would like to spend a few minutes
talking about what we would consider as
conventional food production. By this,
I mean, food produced by conventional
agriculture and food production from the
February 75/page 38
sea, We have heard a good deal of
rhetoric in the past few years about the
possibilities of feeding the world pop-
ulation. One tends to get a sense of
complete unreality, depending upon which
source of information one is listening
to. For example, we can dispense with
the food from the sea concept fairly
simply. Ten years ago in the popular
press and in a number of books, we heard
the forecast that the sea could easily
support ten times the world’s population.
Well, the realities of the situation are
that maybe it can, but we know of no
technology which is capable of exploiting
this potential at the present time. Food
production from the sea increased con-
tinually until about 1970 and then
started to decrease. The production
from the sea at the present time is de-
creasing, because most of the major
stocks have been overfished; and cons-
ervation measures have simply not been
adequate to conserve the fishing stocks
at steady state. Consequently, I think
most realistic forecasters would say that
on a purely theoretical basis, based
upon carbon assimilation, the sea is
capable of producing about one hundred
million tons of fish suitable for human
consumption on a world wide basis. In
1970, the world was harvesting approx-
imately 70 million tons; so even under
the best of circumstances, the increases
that can be expected are of the order of
1/2 of present consumption. I person-
ally believe this is optimistic, since
present indications are that the catches
are decreasing, not increasing. So in
terms of increased food production from
the sea, we have to either develop an
Journal of Food Distribution Researentirely new technology or face the
realistic situation that food from the
sea cannot be increased to any appreciable
extent.
Let us turn very briefly to the
world food situation from the conven-
tional agriculture point of view. Here
we have a broad diversity of opinions.
Some of the alarmists would have us
believe that we are on a crisis basis
certainly within the next ten years. It
is rather curious that the crisis is
always ten years away. When we reach
that point the forecasters forecast
another ten years. I remember reading
as a student the fascinating forecast by
George Orwell in his book ~. I will
have a daughter who will graduate from
high school in 1984. And for those of
you who have read the book, I don’t
believe we are going to have alcohol in
the surrogate fluid in 1984. The facts
of the matter are that in terms of con-
ventional agriculture food production
has had a rather dismaying habit of
keeping up with population. Admittedly,
the production has not been uniform
around the population centers, but the
total production roughly correlates with
the total population. On the other hand,
the economists, whom we assume should be
in a better position to judge this
situation than others, give us an optim-
istic point of view of the ability of
conventional agriculture to increase
its production in the near future. We
can certainly do this in the U.S.,
Canada, Australia and Brazil. I firmly
believe that with the technical know-
ledge at hand, we will have no dif-
ficulty in coping with the increases in
population in the immediate future,
meaning ten years. I should note, how-
ever, that with world population increas-
ing at the rate it is, I can’t believe
that science will be able to cope with
this forever, Undoubtedly, we are going
to reach a point where population out-
strips food supply. I suspect it is
closer than we believe in spite of the
optimistic food supply situations as we
hear described, for example, by Mr.
Quentin West of the U.S Economic Research
Service. I shall leave this area of
conventional agriculture with one very
pertinent comment. This world is
destined to use conventional agriculture
as a major source of nutrients for the
future, at least as long as I have any
conceivable hope of living. However,
nutrient sources for conventional agri-
culture will be supplemented by nutrients
from other sources. At the present time,
they are exceedingly small indeed, but
they will grow gradually, slowly and
continually in the future. Let us dis-
cuss for a few minutes some of the
sources that, in my opinion, are likely
to become important as sources as human
nutrients. I mentioned previously that
we can make human nutrients out of
almost anything of organic nature. So
we should merely look at what materials
of organic nature we have at our dis-
posal. A number of fascinating possibil-
ities come to mind. One, obviously,
is petroleum. In my opinion, this is
bound to be a very important develop-
ment for human food in the future. At
the present time, there are very large
installations being planned in Britain,
France, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Japan
to produce yeast protein from petroleum
sources. Their schedule is such that
the yeast will probably be used as
animal feed, due to problems of clean-up.
We will feed the yeast being grown on
petroleum to animals and eat the animals
for human food. Eventually, as techno-
logy develops and the volume of produc-
tion increases, undoubtedly, the yeast
will be incorporated directly into human
food. The present size of some of the
contemplated plants make this a very
obvious development. We will also see
an increase in the use of yeast for
animal food and human food from a number
of other sources. For example, in the
production of cheese, in this country,
tremendous quantities of whey are dis-
posed of. Unfortunately, with our anti-
pollution laws, it is no longer possible
to utilize streams and rivers as dis-
posal sites and it may be less costly
to convert whey into a form of yeast,
which can be used as animal food. This
is not to say that the collection,
Journal of Food Distribution Research February 75/page 39sanitation and processing problems are
going to make the process economic in its
own right. However, if we introduce the
cost of disposal, it may well be that this
process may develop faster than we anti-
cipate at the present time. The same
type of thinking applies to the production
of cellulose for pulp and paper in this
country. Tremendous quantities of wood
sugars are a disposal problem. Sulfite
liquor is a particularly difficult mate-
rial to deal with from both a disposal
point and a processing point of view.
However, it may be less expensive to con-
vert the sugars into yeast as source of
protein for feed and food. I anticipate
that the production of protein from this
source will increase. There are a number
of other suggestions to produce protein
from carbohydrates, as for example, yeast
protein from molasses. The reason for
the activity and apparent research in-
terest in the production of protein foods
as opposed to carbohydrate foods is that
protein has been projected as being in
short supply by the nutritionists for the
past 15 years. However, the nutritional
forecasts are changing. Human require-
ments for protein are gradually being
lowered and the emphasis for protein may
not be as acute as we would have believed
ten years ago. This is not to say that
it still is not important. It iS, but
other human nutrients are important too.
There doesn’t seem to be any good reason
why we cannot take, for example, the
carbohydrates as a by-product of the man-
ufacture of cheese or the sulfite liquor
sugars or molasses and use them directly
as a source of carbohydrates for human
use. I think there are good reasons why
we do not really worry about the supply
of carbohydrates to the same extent that
we worry about the supply of proteins.
The answer is that it is easier to pro-
duce carbohydrates. We have the vast
production of cereal grains in the tem-
perate areas and high carbohydrate crops
such as sugar cane in the tropical
regions.
The supply of protein suitable for
human use has received considerable re-
search interest from other areas, for
example, the Amoco Company has concluded
that they can make ethyl alcohol from a
petroleum source and grow yeast on the
ethyl alcohol and provide a source of
human nutrients from the yeast. This,
of course, would make the yeast economic
in its own right. Other sources of
protein which will become important are
protein from cottonseed meal. There
are two breakthroughs in this area which
undoubtedly will make cottonseed more
attractive for human consumption. One
is the development of varieties of cotton
which have a very low content of gossypol.
This compound is a toxic yellow pigment.
The other is development of milling
processes, which enable the processor to
actually remove the gossypol from con-
ventional cottonseed sources. In either
case, protein from cottonseed meal will
be available for feed and food in the
future in large quantities. Another
obvious source of protein which has
received considerable world-wide atten-
tion is protein from leaves. Dr. Pirie
in England is an advocate of the develop-
ment of relatively simple systems for
removing protein enriched concentrates
from green leaves. However, the problem
is that these protein concentrates are
virtually inedible by our standards. They
require considerably more processing to
make them attractive to the human public.
Such processing is certainly possible,
but at the present time, it does not look
as if it is economically feasible. There
is considerable interest in this area in
the development of protein concentrates
for human use from alfalfa. However, the
areas that are important for alfalfa
production also have an alfalfa weevil
problem, so pesticide control measures
will have to be utilized in conjunction.
However, this is very localized, and the
overall situation of protein from green
leaves does not look very promising, to
me, at the present time.
There is one potential source of
food, which has received considerable
attention in the lay press, simply be-
cause it is spectacular. This refers tc)
the production of human food from sewage.
Sewage is one material with no lack of
February 75/page 40 Journal of Food Distribution Resear(supply. There is no question in my mind
that we can make material from sewage,
which is suitable for human consumption,
but I seriously doubt at the present
time, whether we would be willing to pay
the cost. Considerable processing is
required to make acceptable products,
and at the present time, the same nutri-
tive value can be obtained much more
easily from other sources. I am a firm
believer in the antipollution sewage
disposal techniques, which are being
enforced in many parts of the country,
and we may as well see the day when we
will recycle sewage into material suitable
for feed and food. However, I have
sincere doubts as to whether it will
happen in my life time. There are many
other suggestions for food from uncon-
ventional sources. They are all fas-
cinating from a technical point of view,
but they will not show up on the decimal
point in terms of the volume of produc-
tion in our present world situation,
We will still depend on conventional
agriculture for the last bulk of our
human nutrient supply.
Journal of Food Distribution Research February 751page 41

PRODUCTIVITY FOR THE FUTURE: FOOD PRODUCTION

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