Vol. 6 No. 1 (2022)
Comment

A Wager on Global Food Prices 2001–2020: Who Won and What Does it Mean?

PDF HTML
  • Stan Becker,
  • David Lam
Stan Becker
Johns Hopkins Univeristy
David Lam
University of Michigan
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3197/JPS.63772238772430

Published 2021-12-14

Keywords

  • food prices,
  • population,
  • wager,
  • economics,
  • ecology

How to Cite

Becker, Stan, and David Lam. 2021. “A Wager on Global Food Prices 2001–2020: Who Won and What Does It Mean?”. The Journal of Population and Sustainability 6 (1):99-108. https://doi.org/10.3197/JPS.63772238772430.

Copyright (c) 2021 Stan Becker, David Lam

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Crossref
Scopus
Google Scholar
Europe PMC

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a 2011 wager between Stan Becker and David Lam about the trajectory of world food prices for the period 2011–2020 versus the period 2002–2010. The wager was a response to Lam’s 2011 presidential address to the Population Association of America, which showed that many health and socio-demographic indicators had improved over the previous fifty years, in spite of the addition of four billion people to the world’s population. Lam lost the wager, with the Food and Agriculture Organization’s price index for five food groups averaging about twenty per cent higher for 2011–2020 than for 2001–2010. Becker and Lam discuss the background of the wager, give their differing interpretations of the outcome and discuss future trends in population, food production and food prices. Lam gives a more optimistic perspective on future trends, while Becker raises concerns about rapid degradation of planetary ecosystems, species loss and global warming.

PDF HTML

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

  1. Becker, S. 2013. ‘Has the World really survived the population bomb?’ Demography 50 (6): 2173–2181. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-013-0236-y
  2. M.F.P. Bierkens and Y. Wada. 2019. ‘Non-renewable groundwater use and groundwater depletion: a review’. Environmental Research Letters 14 (6): 1–43. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab1a5f
  3. Cluff, M. and S. Mustafa. 2020. Food Outlook: Revisions to the FAO Food Price Indices. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization. http://www.fao.org/3/ca9509en/ca9509en.pdf#page=78 (accessed 27 September 2021).
  4. Ehrlich, P.R. and R.M. Pringle. 2008. ‘Where does biodiversity go from here? A grim business-as-usual forecast and a hopeful portfolio of partial solutions’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (1): 11579–11586. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0801911105
  5. FAO. 2020. State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization. https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/ca9229en/ (accessed 26 November 2021).’
  6. FAO, 2021. World Food Situation. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization. http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ (accessed 27 September 2021).
  7. FAO and UNEP. 2020. The State of the World’s Forests 2020. Forests, Biodiversity and People. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization and United Nations Environment Programme https://doi.org/10.4060/ca8642en
  8. Frona, D., J. Szenderk and M. Harangi-Rákos. 2019. ‘The challenge of feeding the world’. Sustainability 11 (20) 5816: 1–18. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11205816
  9. Gerber, P.J., H. Steinfeld, B. Henderson et al. 2013. Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock – A Global Assessment of Emissions and Mitigation Opportunities. Rome: FAO.
  10. IPCC. 2019. Climate Change and Land: An IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems. Geneva: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/ (accessed 27 September 2021).
  11. IPCC. 2021. Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Geneva: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#SPM (accessed 27 September 2021).
  12. IUCN 2021. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Gland: International Union for Conservation of Nature https://www.iucnredlist.org/search?taxonomies=100091&searchType=species (accessed 27 September 2021).
  13. Kiel, K., V. Matheson and K. Golembiewski. 2010. ‘Luck or skill? An examination of the Ehrlich-Simon bet’. Ecological Economics 69 (7): 1365–1367. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.03.007
  14. Lam, D. 2011. ‘How the world survived the population bomb: lessons from 50 years of extraordinary demographic history’. Demography 48 (4): 1231-1262. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0070-z
  15. Lam, D. 2013. Reply to Stan Becker, ‘Has the world really survived the population bomb? (commentary on “How the world survived the population bomb: lessons from 50 years of extraordinary demographic history”)’. Demography 50 (6): 2183–2186. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-013-0249-6
  16. Population Assoc. of America. 2012. ‘The wager: Becker v. Lam on food prices’. PAA Affairs. Winter 2011–2012: 12.
  17. Rockstrom, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone et al. 2009. ‘A safe operating space for humanity’. Nature 461: 472–475. https://doi.org/10.1038/461472a
  18. UNDESA. 2021. World Population Prospects 2019. New York: United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs. Available at: https://population.un.org/wpp/DataQuery/