I agree this is among the very best of this century's "Declinist Literature". Although the author covers a lot of problematic ground, from avian flu to bioengineering to obesity, what sticks with me the most is his urgent Cassandra alarm about the looming danger of worldwide famine.
Those who poo poo Roberts as "Malthusian" should read more carefully the section with Malthus, who was writing his doomsday predictions at a time when the whole New World still lay there rich in topsoil, ripe for takeover by millions of starving European farmers. Sure, Malthus was proven wrong - at that time - but he would've been correct if the New World hadn't been quickly deforested/deprairied and farmed to feed teeming Europe. There is no frontier left, (the Amazon is the last big frontier left on Earth to be cleared and farmed, and we all know about that grim scenario),everywhere soils are massively depleted and threatened by flood, pests and drought from climate change, while our addiction to natural gas derived fertilizer is a recipe for major famines when the pipelines are cut off by war or peak oil. There is little water left in China, India and many other regions, which - as Roberts shows - import water indirectly in the form of grain from those that still have water. But anway, how is it "Malthusian" to point out rationally that fecund soil has peaked all over the Earth?
Recommended to go with it is Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture
Perhaps Roberts was hastily edited or not edited(for example, "eighteen hundred years ago" instead of "eighteen thousand years" in the section on Cro Magnon diet. Yet readers should realize that many major publishers no longer use copy editors and sometimes agents without training in editing are now asked to do the job without pay, so get used to errors and typos).

I agree this is among the very best of this century's "Declinist Literature". It's an urgent Cassandra alarm about the looming danger of worldwide famine.
Those who poo poo Roberts as "Malthusian" should read more carefully the section with Malthus, who was writing his doomsday predictions at a time when the whole New World still lay there rich in topsoil, ripe for takeover by millions of starving European farmers. Sure, Malthus was proven wrong - at that time - but he would've been correct if the New World hadn't been quickly deforested/deprairied and farmed to feed teeming Europe. There is no frontier left, (the Amazon is the last big frontier left on Earth to be cleared and farmed, and we all know about that grim scenario),everywhere soils are massively depleted and threatened by flood, pests and drought from climate change, while our addiction to natural gas derived fertilizer is a recipe for major famines when the pipelines are cut off by war or peak oil. There is little water left in China, India and many other regions, which - as Roberts shows - import water indirectly in the form of grain from those that still have water. But anway, how is it "Malthusian" to point out rationally that fecund soil has peaked all over the Earth?
Recommended to go with it is Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture
Perhaps Roberts was hastily edited or not edited(for example, "eighteen hundred years ago" instead of "eighteen thousand years" in the section on Cro Magnon diet. Yet readers should realize that many major publishers no longer use copy editors and sometimes agents without training in editing are now asked to do the job without pay, so get used to errors and typos).

Robert's "End of Food" includes a lot of good information, but there are probably 200 places where a good editor would've challenged the author to reword or tighten up the manuscript. I wonder whether his editor even read the book carefully, or whether he/she knew enough about the subject to properly edit it. A few examples of the issues I'm talking about:

At the beginning of the book Roberts lays out a ridiculously simplified, linear reductionist theory of the role meat consumption played in man's history (except that he rolls it out as fact rather than no small amount of speculation).
There are a number of factual inaccuracies that should've been caught or at least reworded. Example: He states that meat is easier to digest than plant foods, which in many cases is simply wrong. Cooked rice, for example, is half-digested before it's even in the stomach.

Three times Roberts refers to soil as dirt. In 45 years I've never heard a farmer (or any agricultural specialist) refer to soil (in a field)as "dirt". This carelessness on Robert's part is enough to make thoughtful readers question whether he's been shoddy in other areas too. There are at least a dozen places where he refers to animal manure as poop, which is just plain silly, and makes Roberts sound like a goofball. Imagine if physicians referred to a laceration as a "Bo-Bo" in a medical report, not once, but 12 times? Could you take him seriously?

Roberts is very very loose with his date references. Sometimes he's wrong. On p. 118 he states "By the late 1960s the U.S. was in deep economic trouble......having lost it manufacturing lead to low-cost rivals like Japan...." But in fact in the late 60s very little U.S. manufacturing had shifted to Japan. Roberts is only about 15 years off there.
Then, on page 152 he writes, "...by the late 1980s....African output faltered;...The timing couldn't have been worse. Just as Africans were producing fewer bushels [in the late 80s], a new glut of grain , unleashed by Butz's "fence row to fence row" policy, sent prices plummeting". The problem with this is that Butz's fence row policy was implemented in 1971, almost 20 years before the African output faltered, which is many years too much lapsed time to have had a meaningful direct effect.

Finally, what possible reason is there for a 26 page prologue in a general interest book such as this? 26 pages! Where was Robert's editor? If a writer's proposing a 26 page prologue, there's at least a chapter missing in the body of the book.

All in all I enjoyed the book, although it's not nearly as well-written as Pollan's food books.

I had read Roberts' earlier "the end of oil" and had forgotten how difficult it was to read through. This book is slightly less interesting despite the more interesting topic, which in theory should be more malthusian than the end of oil, but Roberts treats every issue with a very vacillating, politician-like ambiguity. It's surprising for example that he doesn't make more out of the peaking of fossil fuels in relation to fertilizer for food production. Every time he comes near to making a point he hedges and describes the optimistic and pessimistic viewpoints without really taking a stand.
Typical of his writing style as well is his tendency to travel all over the globe interviewing random peasants, farmers, executives, etc., as if a travelogue somehow makes the subject more accessible. Presumably this is because he is a journalist, not an expert per se in the issue of agriculture or food. But after so many round the world trips interviewing a farmer in china for ex. and his woes the reader begins to get tired of his peripatetic descriptions.
In summary I found it hard to really get a grip on any of the issues he presents except in a very vague way and I found it equally hard to get all the way through to the end without giving up. And this is not because I don't find the issue serious-- if anything, I think he is far too optimistic: the lack of freshwater supplies, peaking of fossil fuels, lack of arable land, increasing loss of topsoil, increasing population pressures, will probably result in some kind of malthusian crisis.

THe funny thing about the modern era is how it has consistantly been shaped by the idea of the coming doomsday. The method (nuclear war, overpopulation, climate change) shifts with the wind, but the constant is a belief in the inevitable fall of our "evil" civilization unless we sign up for one political agenda or another.

Paul Roberts is making a career in trading on fear. He was crowned as a genius for writing a book about an energy crisis (the end of oil) shortly before the crisis arrived. As a followup, he is selling on fears about food.

This book is poorly researched, badly organized and doesn't quite understand what point it wants to make. It can't decide if it wants to be whiny book about how walmart for social changes in America because it sells cheap food or if it wants to trade in hysteria about rising food prices and diminishing food resources. He can't decide if he wants to complain about the efficiency of a meat diet or global warming or family social dining habits.

And in the end, the book doesn't lead anywhere. It ends with Roberts putting out a political agenda about food. Ironically (in a sad sense),
Roberts perscription for fixing his food "crisis" in the end are all the things that the world has been doing for the last 50 years. Bluntly, we need to apply brute force science to food production with a goal of increasing production regardless of consequences or costs.

He pushes genetic modification as one answer. He pushes the elimination of meat production in favor of factory farmed fish as another. And he wants international planning to drive food production.

In summary, he doesn't make his case or lay the groundwork for the changes he is suggesting. He can't construct an argument to save his life and depends on a shotgunning facts out as a substitute.

Since Ehrlich and the Club of Rome, we've seen a number of attempts to resurrect the dire, zero-sum predictions of Thomas Malthus. And yet the world enjoys more food and less hunger each year as human beings learn to trade and cooperate over greater distances. That old bugbear, "overpopulation" rears its head again in an effort that reveals an author that is, himself, malnourished when it comes to economics.

Readers will find familiar scapegoats in big box stores that in reality increase the availability of food to everyone -- especially the poor. Agricultural subsidies and trade barriers are the real culprits when it comes to price spikes and food shortages. But the "End of Food" is yet another attempt to roll back the gains made by globalization -- gains that have filled more bellies than any nostalgia for local growers and rehashed Malthusianism.

Sadly, books like this are an intellectual drought in the garden of plenty. Reflective and open-minded types will turn their eyes to the works of Julian Simon, the ingenuity of Norman Borlaug, and greater understanding of the ecosystem of prices and incentives that enable food markets adapt and change to meet the demands of a healthier, better-fed global population.

Sorry, Mr. Malthus. No more cause for pessimism, today, than in the 18th Century.

I am really enjoying this book. The current rice shortage and e-coli outbreaks were topics I wanted to better understand, and that's what got me interested (and it has certainly helped illuminate those topics for me). But I'm finding the whole thing fascinating. Each chapter is a carefully-constructed, highly-readable nugget of history, research and personal accounts. Roberts' descriptions of his visits to China, Africa, pig farms, chicken ranches, etc. make the historical narrative all the more persuasive. He is deft at zeroing in on the ironic and bizarre. One of my favorite chapters is a walk through the evolution of human food consumption. He manages to cover thousands of years of eating history in a few concise, satisfying pages (not a small task). Glad I bought this book.

I have been concerned with our food supply. I found this book an excellent source of information. Here is a short summary of what I got from reading it:

Our concentration on money as the only really important thing in our lives had led us to ignore all the other problems facing us.

To a greater and greater extent, our food comes from large, monoculture farms using heavy applications of synthetic fertilizer. This results in deterioration of the topsoil, which leads to decreasing crops and eventually changes arable land to a desert. This style of farming is heavily dependent on oil, and we face an imminent oil shortage.

In addition, the world is also facing a serious water shortage; and farmers are reluctant to save water when it will either cost money or reduce the crop.

If food were distributed equitably, there is enough in the world to feed the present population. But, with the population explosion and the decreasing food supply this situation will not last unless something drastic is done.

As a result of our focus on money, there is widespread corruption in our government, which is not willing to do anything about the problem that will hurt the big corporations, the source of big money. And in general, those corporations like things the way they are.

Paul Roberts lists a number of disasters that would precipitate the situation. The question is, which will come first.

This book is not for those who believe "everything is for the best in this best of possible worlds".

But for the rest of us, it is an excellent account of our food problems and what causes them.

The end of food? Is that what you're on about Roberts? You crybabies today don't know what the end of food is!

When I was kid growin' up in Montana, during a little something called The Great Depression, my daddy went to town one day, and he came back with a hundred pound sack of beets, 'cause that's all there was! And we ate beets for breakfast, beets for lunch, and beets for dinner every goddamn day for a month a Sundays! Sure, I got sick of 'em. Ya damn RIGHT I did! But I never complained. Some folks had NOTHIN'!

Nobody was writin' any whiny books complainin' about the end of this or that. We were too busy peelin' beets, cookin' beets, mashin' beets, toastin' beets--'cause that's all there was! I didn't need some fancy book tellin' me I wasn't gonna have nothin' to eat 'cause I was livin' it every day!

Besides, we didn't have any books; we had beets! We had to smash 'em flat like paper and write on 'em with a burnt beet we used like a pencil! That's right, smart guy, I had to write with a beet on a beet. I had to write ABOUT beets, 'cause that's all there was!

And I bought the wrong consarn book to start with 'cause it turns out there's another book called The End Of Food that was written two years ago by some other fella had the same gloomy outlook as you! What's your next book gonna be called, Roberts--Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone? Crimony!

I give this book three beets, 'cause that's all I have, ya knothead!

"The End of Food" provides a good background on a number of current and future problems involving modern food production.

Roberts believes that the problem of food safety is getting out of control, per recent examples of spinach, peanut butter, hamburger, pet food, and tomatoes. Rising food prices due to increased growth of biofuels and rising energy prices present another serious problem. The world is also increasingly encountering severe weather due to man-made climate change, decreasing availability of water supplies, and increased food demand due to those in developing nations now being able to afford Western-style diets heavy on beef (requires about 7 lbs. grain/lb. of cattle). American meat consumption levels could only be supported for 40% of the existing world population.

Wal-Mart's 21% market share in food is credited with pushing grocery prices down 9% since 1985, as well as average wages down 2.2%. Successful competitors often go upscale, and offer takeout (41% margins, about twice those in cosmetics), though Wal-Mart is moving in this direction as well.

Positive trends include increased chicken production (about 3X more efficient than beef - less feed, time-to-market (40 days, vs. 70 in the 1970s), and inedible proportion. Fish are even more efficient - about 1/3 are now "farmed."

America's obesity epidemic began in the 1980s, and is partly due to less physical jobs. Another factor has been the greater impact of food innovations on lower priced foods with greater caloric impact - thus, a greater impact on the poor. (Roberts does not comment on their likely greater problems with depression-linked eating, possibly aggravated by an increasingly difficult economy.) Then there's the aggressive marketing of super-sizing, schools turning over lunch programs to fast-food vendors, allowing vending machines on campus, and ads aimed at children.

Government farm supports have led to the U.S. becoming a high-cost producer, yet allowing U.S. farmer to export corn for 27% less than the cost to produce it. (Similarly, with other crops.) Mexico's agriculture production has suffered since NAFTA allowed our below-cost imports - low-productivity jobs have often been replaced by zero-productivity unemployment for farm workers. Meanwhile, the U.S. food-trade balance went negative in 2004, and Brazil is currently using only a fifth of its arable land base of over 1 million square miles.

African food production is far from a success story. Nine-hundred million are malnourished, and another billion suffer chronic nutrient deficiencies. Resistance to change is a problem - one example is farmer reluctance to replace maize (not drought-resistant) with other crops; government corruption is another. Still another is the spread of a new form of wheat rust.

Food safety is better than decades ago, but is highly vulnerable to fast transmission - especially involving new bugs and viruses. Tracking sources is difficult - one study found the average 4 oz. hamburger has meat from 55 cows. This is even more difficult in Asia, with its large numbers of duck and chicken producers, as well as their links with wild birds.

Crop-yield increases/acre are down to slightly over 1%/year - half that of before, while fertilizer and transport costs are greatly up. Agriculture accounts for about 70% of U.S. nitrous-oxide - a greenhouse pollutant 300X more potent than CO2. Our food production accounts for about 20% of U.S. energy use, and about 75% of all freshwater use. Genetic energy fears, on the other hand, seem totally unfounded.

Finally, Roberts' conclusions are supported by a New York Times 6/21/08 article on India: Groundwater has been depleted at alarming rates, changes in temperature and rain patterns could diminish agricultural output by 30 percent by the 2080s (per Peterson Institute for International Economics).

Bottom-Line: Malthus and Erlich are likely to be proven correct when world population reaches 9 billion, if not sooner.

"The End of Food" provides a good background on a number of current and future problems involving modern food production.

Roberts believes that the problem of food safety is getting out of control, per recent examples of spinach, peanut butter, hamburger, pet food, and tomatoes. Rising food prices due to increased growth of biofuels and rising energy prices present another serious problem. The world is also increasingly encountering severe weather due to man-made climate change, decreasing availability of water supplies, and increased food demand due to those in developing nations now being able to afford Western-style diets heavy on beef (requires about 7 lbs. grain/lb. of cattle). American meat consumption levels could only be supported for 40% of the existing world population.

Wal-Mart's 21% market share in food is credited with pushing grocery prices down 9% since 1985, as well as average wages down 2.2%. Successful competitors often go upscale, and offer takeout (41% margins, about twice those in cosmetics), though Wal-Mart is moving in this direction as well.

Positive trends include increased chicken production (about 3X more efficient than beef - less feed, time-to-market (40 days, vs. 70 in the 1970s), and inedible proportion. Fish are even more efficient - about 1/3 are now "farmed."

America's obesity epidemic began in the 1980s, and is partly due to less physical jobs. Another factor has been the greater impact of food innovations on lower priced foods with greater caloric impact - thus, a greater impact on the poor. (Roberts does not comment on their likely greater problems with depression-linked eating, possibly aggravated by an increasingly difficult economy.) Then there's the aggressive marketing of super-sizing, schools turning over lunch programs to fast-food vendors, allowing vending machines on campus, and ads aimed at children.

Government farm supports have led to the U.S. becoming a high-cost producer, yet allowing U.S. farmer to export corn for 27% less than the cost to produce it. (Similarly, with other crops.) Mexico's agriculture production has suffered since NAFTA allowed our below-cost imports - low-productivity jobs have often been replaced by zero-productivity unemployment for farm workers. Meanwhile, the U.S. food-trade balance went negative in 2004, and Brazil is currently using only a fifth of its arable land base of over 1 million square miles.

African food production is far from a success story. Nine-hundred million are malnourished, and another billion suffer chronic nutrient deficiencies. Resistance to change is a problem - one example is farmer reluctance to replace maize (not drought-resistant) with other crops; government corruption is another. Still another is the spread of a new form of wheat rust.

Food safety is better than decades ago, but is highly vulnerable to fast transmission - especially involving new bugs and viruses. Tracking sources is difficult - one study found the average 4 oz. hamburger has meat from 55 cows. This is even more difficult in Asia, with its large numbers of duck and chicken producers, as well as their links with wild birds.

Crop-yield increases/acre are down to slightly over 1%/year - half that of before, while fertilizer and transport costs are greatly up. Agriculture accounts for about 70% of U.S. nitrous-oxide - a greenhouse pollutant 300X more potent than CO2. Our food production accounts for about 20% of U.S. energy use, and about 75% of all freshwater use. Genetic energy fears, on the other hand, seem totally unfounded.

Bottom-Line: Malthus and Erlich are likely to be proven correct when world population reaches 9 billion, if not sooner.

Roberts essentially shows why the present,agribusiness based ,large farm,industrial factory approach to food production, that relies primarily on oil based fertilizers,herbicides,insecticides,fungicides,and pesticides ,is not sustainable .The world has a major food problem RIGHT NOW.This factory approach to food production is breaking down primarily because the price of a barrel of oil is currently at $139.However,the problem was visible even when oil was priced at $75 a barrel.The current "modern" chemical and oil based approach was designed for a food production system where the price of a barrel of oil was at $15-$20 a barrel.The costs of chemical farming are going through the roof as the price of a barrel of oil continues to skyrocket upward. Other factors are exacerbating the problem.First,it takes about 8 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of red meat from cows.Rising incomes in countries like China and India are leading to a increased preference for more red meat consumption in the diets of people in those countries.This new added demand is starting to raise the price of all of the food chain elements.Second,the biofuels(like ethenol) emphasis is a blunder.Biofuels do not substantially reduce the dependence on imported oil for the USA and merely reduce the supply available for food production for people to eat.Third,the current economic subsidization of agribusiness by the tax payer in America is simply multiplying the problem.Third World farmers are going out of business in large numbers as imported and subsidized American grain undermines their ability to feed their populations locally.Fourth, the current diet based on meat consumption is causing more and more farm land to be converted to ranch ,grazing land,further reducing the supply of grain and increasing the demand for grain to feed the herds.This is also contributing to rising world prices.Fifth,factor in global warming ,droughts in Australia and California,constant civil wars and revolutions in Africa,decreasing amounts of rainfall,overpumping of underground aquifers,desertification,continuing losses in topsoil,and you have a recipe for a potential collapse in the world wide food supply RIGHT NOW.
Some of the solutions are to eat locally(farmer's markets,organic foods),emphasize more fruits and vegetables in the average diet, and substantially cut back on the amount of meat that is consumed .

This is the second "The End of Food" in a series; the first The End of Food, by Thomas Pawlick, was published in 2006. Paul Roberts, a "resource journalist" has also written The End of Oil, published in 2005.

This time, Roberts explains how we've become used to a food industry that efficiently delivers an abundance of calories with less and less nutrition. What's more, we will never achieve mass production of quality food without an unacceptable loss of calories. The tradeoff is much steeper than is commonly known. We tend to be unaware because as a society we care about entertainment as opposed to making informed choices.

In this work, Roberts contributes to what I call "Decilinist Literature". This genre is currently concerned with the un-sustainability of the world economic order with a focus on America and often drawing on information about the fall of empires past, particularly the Roman Empire.

Roberts is one of the edgier voices of Declinism today - he thinks we're in for a radical population decline. The problem, according to Roberts, is that ever-cheaper food provided supply stability for a very long time and that the period of prolonged stability is now ending, ushering in famine and political instability on a grand scale.

If Roberts is correct, the food industry will be unable to maintain supply even if quality can be further sacrificed. About one-fifth of all U.S. energy use goes into the food system, not even counting the fuel required to get food to market. Also, water tables are in decline in many agricultural areas and long-term drought appears to be setting into other regions in the world. The lifting and transporting of water to productive land will require increasing amounts of energy. The food industry has become too dependent on increasingly scarce inputs such as fossil fuels and water and we should expect widespread famines within the next several years.

As we saw in The End of Oil, we almost certainly do not have even a half-decade before total world oil extraction begins to decline, if it hasn't already. Therefore the rise in food prices will accelerate and we should not be surprised by it.

The 70s inflation was associated with peak oil in the U.S. This time it's the world that is peaking in oil production, with enormous implications for worldwide food prices.

The vision is that we will all have to spend a lot of time in long lines to buy cheap foodish-shaped items loaded with corn syrup, trans fat, soy emulsifiers, processed cheese, sugar, added dyes, sodium nitrite (to preserve freshness) and glutaraldehyde (kills insects).

To further the vision, identification cards will be required to authenticate food purchased in stores. Eventually, all the store identification cards will inform a common database and it will be possible to implement food rationing for items experiencing shortages. When this happens, there will be different classes of uniform store identification cards.

A food rationing program will not be designed to ensure equality for all. By definition, inequality will exist when there are shortages. The End of Food series, and Roberts' book in particular, warns of a future that we might still be able to avoid.

A lot of people in the world can't afford even the cheapest food anymore. The End of Food explains how different nations have responded thus far to this unfolding crisis. Policy responses are not encouraging as they haven't changed the way food is produced and transported.

The packaging, transport and marketing of food has increased in intensity while there is no wholesale move toward quality. For example, livestock continues to be kept confined in overcrowded pens far from large single-crop farms (high-yield corn) that feeds them. All these animals generate manure in such quantities as to defy the imagination. Apparently, hogs are particularly prolific, and their waste runs off into large poop lagoons that cannot be properly contained and do not fertilize the cropland. Further, the crowded confinement of animals, living in their own waste, as well as the volume of empty calories fed to them necessitates the use of ever-increasing quantities of antibiotics. This is a downward-quality spiral and a major cause of diabetes and obesity.

Roberts warns of an empty calorie type of starvation, obesity without hope as nutritious food gets too expensive for most people. He warns of the consequences of waiting too long to be able to implement an acceptable solution. If we wait too long, some solution set will be imposed on us involuntarily, and it probably won't be anything that we would have chosen voluntarily.

It has been two years since the last "The End of Food" was published. Let's hope we get another in the series within the same time increment. Food is one of the central topics within Declinist Literature.

This is the second "The End of Food" in a series; the first The End of Food, by Thomas Pawlick, was published in 2006. Paul Roberts, a "resource journalist" has also written The End of Oil, published in 2005.

This time, Roberts explains how we've become used to a food industry that efficiently delivers an abundance of calories with less and less nutrition. What's more, we will never achieve mass production of quality food without an unacceptable loss of calories. The tradeoff is much steeper than is commonly known. We tend to be unaware because as a society we care about entertainment as opposed to making informed choices.

In this work, Roberts contributes to what I call "Decilinist Literature". This genre is currently concerned with the un-sustainability of the world economic order with a focus on America and often drawing on information about the fall of empires past, particularly the Roman Empire.

Roberts is one of the edgier voices of Declinism today - he thinks we're in for a radical population decline. The problem, according to Roberts, is that ever-cheaper food provided supply stability for a very long time and that the period of prolonged stability is now ending, ushering in famine and political instability on a grand scale.

If Roberts is correct, the food industry will be unable to maintain supply even if quality can be further sacrificed. About one-fifth of all U.S. energy use goes into the food system, not even counting the fuel required to get food to market. Also, water tables are in decline in many agricultural areas and long-term drought appears to be setting into other regions in the world. The lifting and transporting of water to productive land will require increasing amounts of energy. The food industry has become too dependent on increasingly scarce inputs such as fossil fuels and water and we should expect widespread famines within the next several years.

As we saw in The End of Oil, we almost certainly do not have even a half-decade before total world oil extraction begins to decline, if it hasn't already. Therefore the rise in food prices will accelerate and we should not be surprised by it.

The vision is that we will all have to spend a lot of time in long lines to buy cheap foodish-shaped items loaded with corn syrup, trans fat, soy emulsifiers, processed cheese, sugar, added dyes, sodium nitrite (to preserve freshness) and glutaraldehyde (kills insects).

To further the vision, identification cards will be required to authenticate food purchased in stores. Eventually, all the store identification cards will inform a common database and it will be possible to implement food rationing for items experiencing shortages. When this happens, there will be different classes of uniform store identification cards.

A food rationing program will not be designed to ensure equality for all. By definition, inequality will exist when there are shortages. The End of Food series, and Roberts' book in particular, warns of a future that we might still be able to avoid.

A lot of people in the world can't afford even the cheapest food anymore. The End of Food explains how different nations have responded thus far to this unfolding crisis. Policy responses are not encouraging as they haven't changed the way food is produced and transported.

The packaging, transport and marketing of food has increased in intensity while there is no wholesale move toward quality. For example, livestock continues to be kept confined in overcrowded pens far from large single-crop farms (high-yield corn) that feeds them. All these animals generate manure in such quantities as to defy the imagination. Apparently, hogs are particularly prolific, and their waste runs off into large poop lagoons that cannot be properly contained and do not fertilize the cropland. Further, the crowded confinement of animals, living in their own waste, as well as the volume of empty calories fed to them necessitates the use of ever-increasing quantities of antibiotics. This is a downward-quality spiral and a major cause of diabetes and obesity.

Roberts warns of an empty calorie type of starvation, obesity without hope as nutritious food gets too expensive for most people. He warns of the consequences of waiting too long to be able to implement an acceptable solution. If we wait too long, some solution set will be imposed on us involuntarily, and it probably won't be anything that we would have chosen voluntarily.

It has been two years since the last "The End of Food" was published. Let's hope we get another in the series within the same time increment. Food is one of the central topics within Declinist Literature.

This is the second "The End of Food" in a series; the first The End of Food, by Thomas Pawlick, was published in 2006. Paul Roberts, a "resource journalist" has also written The End of Oil, published in 2005.

This time, Roberts explains how we've become used to a food industry that efficiently delivers an abundance of calories with less and less nutrition. What's more, we will never achieve mass production of quality food without an unacceptable loss of calories. The tradeoff is much steeper than is commonly known. We tend to be unaware because as a society we care about entertainment as opposed to making informed choices.

In this work, Roberts contributes to what I call "Decilinist Literature". This genre is currently concerned with the un-sustainability of the world economic order with a focus on America and often drawing on information about the fall of empires past, particularly the Roman Empire.

Roberts is one of the edgier voices of Declinism today - he thinks we're in for a radical population decline. The problem, according to Roberts, is that ever cheaper food provided supply stability for a very long time and that the period of prolonged stability is now ending, ushering in famine and political instability on a grand scale.

If Roberts is correct, the food industry will be unable to maintain supply even if quality can be further sacrificed. About one-fifth of all U.S. energy use goes into the food system, not even counting the fuel required to get food to market. Also, water tables are in decline in many agricultural areas and long-term drought appears to be setting into other regions. The lifting and transporting of water to productive land will require increasing amounts of energy. The food industry has become too dependent on increasingly scarce inputs such as fossil fuels and water and we should expect widespread famines within the next several years.

As Roberts explained in his first book, we do not have even a half-decade before total world oil extraction begins to decline, if it hasn't already. Therefore the rise in food prices will accelerate.

The vision is that we will all have to spend a lot of time in long lines to buy cheap foodish-shaped items loaded with corn syrup, trans fat, soy emulsifiers, processed cheese, sugar and added dyes. Further, identification cards will be required to authenticate food purchased in stores. At some point all the store identification cards will inform a common database and it will be possible to implement food rationing for items experiencing shortages, depending on the card classification that one has. The End of Food series explains how this is already unfolding.

A lot of people in the world can't afford even the cheapest food anymore. The End of Food explains how different nations have responded thus far to the failure of the food complex to maintain the supply of cheap food. The policy responses are not encouraging as they haven't changed the way food is produced and transported.

The packaging, transport and marketing of food has increased in intensity while there is no wholesale move toward quality. For example, livestock continues to be kept confined in overcrowded pens far from large single-crop farms (high-yield corn) that feeds them. All these animals generate manure in such quantities as to defy the imagination. Apparently, hogs are particularly prolific, and their waste runs off into large poop lagoons that cannot be properly contained and do not fertilize the cropland. Further, the crowded confinement of animals, living in their own waste, as well as the volume of empty calories fed to them necessitates the use of ever-increasing quantities of antibiotics. This is a downward-quality spiral and a major cause of diabetes and obesity.

Roberts warns of an empty calorie type of starvation, obesity without hope as nutritious food gets too expensive for most people. He warns of the consequences of waiting too long to be able to implement an acceptable solution. If we wait too long, some solution set will be imposed on us involuntarily, and it probably won't be anything that we would have chosen voluntarily.

It has been two years since the last "The End of Food" was published. Let's hope we get another in the series within the same time increment. Food is one of the central topics within Declinist Literature.