What happens when the population grows faster than the food supply?

Imagining the farms of the future

About 10,000 years ago, humans began to farm. This agricultural revolution was a turning point in our history and enabled the existence of civilization. Today, nearly 40 percent of our planet is farmland. Spread all over the world, these lands are the pieces to a global puzzle we're all facing: in the future, how can we feed every member of a growing population a healthy diet? Brent Loken investigates in this seven-minute video.

Mapping how human population has grown throughout history

It took 200,000 years for our human population to reach 1 billion—and only 200 years to reach 7 billion. When will our global population peak? And how can we minimize our impact on Earth's resources, even as we approach 11 billion?

How the world produces food, in drone photos

Drone photographer George Steinmetz spent a decade documenting the vast scope of humanity's agriculture using drone photography. Roughly 40% of the Earth's surface is dedicated to growing food, and experts suggest we must produce 60% more food than we do now to feed the projected population in 2050. Browse the absolutely stunning photos here.

Data visualizations showing population growth around the world

This page presents data, charts, and analysis on changes in population growth around the world. Over the last few centuries, the human population has gone through an extraordinary change. In 1800, there were 1 billion people; today, there are more...

Early farming created population booms—and also major busts

Europe’s ancient embrace of farming took the continent on a demographic roller-coaster ride. Regional booms and busts in human numbers occurred between 8,000 and 4,000 years ago, a new study finds.

How public policy shapes demographic trends

This IMF podcast explores the population booms and busts throughout human history. According to Harvard economist and demographer David Bloom, it took more than 50,000 years for the world population to reach 1 billion. But since 1960, we have added...

Mapping the origins of the world's crops

Food has evolved alongside humanity, and through globalized trade, much of the world can enjoy foods once isolated to one region. Examine where your favorite foods originated from and see how diet differs across cultures with these interactive...

Even in recent history, adaptations to the environment drove human evolution

Through genetics, environmental pressures, and cultural influences, humans have evolved to tolerate lactose, develop varying skin pigmentation, and acquire genetic resistance to diseases like bubonic plague. The metabolic and digestive systems of Indigenous peoples have adapted to their diet, which is influenced by the availability of food and water.

Did people domesticate plants or did plants domesticate us?

Humans rely on plants to survive, and many plants have come to rely on humans. This 14-minute video explores how agriculture was simultaneously a building block of civilization and a trap that captured humanity. Plant types that may not have...

See a breakdown of how some of the most common food items are traded across the globe, including the key trade relationships for each item.

The ancient crops we've forgotten how to grow

Roughly half of all world calories today stem from maize, wheat, and rice. But for most of history, plants were domesticated in highly local places. This video dives into the scientists learning about crops no longer highly in use that once fueled entire civilizations in North America. Some forgotten crops include pitseed goosefoot, maygrass, and sumpweed.

See which countries have already reached their peak population, and when others will eventually reach theirs.

Global population growth peaked six decades ago, at 2.3%.

See how populations across the world could change in the 21st century

This tool lets you model the populations of individual countries by adjusting key demographic inputs. See how changes in birth rates, mortality, and migration affect the size and structure of future populations.

Agricultural intensification has accelerated declines in pollinator populations

The practice of using farmland more frequently to increase its yield increases the number of residual pesticides and decreases botanical biodiversity. These processes tend to decrease carrying capacity for pollinators by eliminating food sources and nesting habitats.

Explore an interactive map of global water gaps, caused by human consumption surpassing the rate at which water reserves are replenished by the hydrologic cycle.

Four global trends in shifting demographics

This UN summary outlines four global trends in shifting demographics. The world’s population is expected to peak by the end of the century as fertility rates continue to decline. Between now and 2050, the global population is projected to become...

How a single company hooked the world on herbicides

How harmful are today’s herbicides for us humans, and for the environments they’re seeping into? And do we really need weedkillers to feed the world?

Three examples of how humans are still evolving

For much of nature, natural selection and "survival of the fittest" still play a dominant role; only the strongest can survive in the wild. As little as a few hundred years ago, the same was true for humans, but what about now?

Did agriculture give rise to inequality?

This article explores how economic and social inequality relates to the rise of agriculture. About 10,000 years ago, some hunter-gatherers started farming, launching what came to be known as the Neolithic revolution. Hunting and gathering allowed...

The evolution of the human diet

Could eating like our ancestors make us healthier? One estimate suggests prehistoric hunter-gatherer communities obtained 75% of their calories from meat and fish.

Rapid environmental changes are exacerbating natural extinction processes

Human activities behind climate change, habitat destruction, pollution, and overhunting have resulted in extinction rates up to 1,000 times greater than normal, triggering massive biodiversity loss. This has led scientists to refer to the current geological age as the Anthropocene era, in which humans are the dominant force shaping nature.

The dark side of modern sugar production

Humanity's ancestors evolved to wring more calories from sugary fruits by storing excess sugar as fat, an adaption that's culminated in many peoples' palettes preferring calorie-rich sweet. Now, the desire for sugar has both contributed to a widespread health crisis and been at the center of atrocities around the world.

Learn the history of food science breakthroughs from the 20th century

Long after humans developed the means to produce sufficient food to feed civilizations, scientific research focused on a wide variety of objectives, such as developing methods to preserve food quality (accomplished via frozen food), speeding up cooking (leading to the microwave), and lowering the cost of sweetening food, which high fructose corn syrup provides.

The food industry's hard-to-solve pollution

One-quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. That whopping number includes production and post-farm processes like distribution. See a visualization of the data along with a breakdown explaining how each process contributes to emissions, and why it’s so difficult to improve the agriculture industry.

Humans may be the ultimate invasive species

Originating in East Africa, Homo sapiens migrated across the world beginning about 60,000 years ago and directly harmed countless species by consuming resources and modifying ecosystems to serve our needs. While meeting the definition of an invasive species, some ecologists argue the opposite, claiming that humans have helped preserve numerous species.

Greenhouse gases from farming are driven by meat

The food we eat contributes to one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities, according to two studies published in 2021. These emissions come from various sources along the food production chain, including transportation,...

Why do people play farming simulation video games?

This article is an anthropological dive into farming simulation video games. Humans began experimenting with agriculture and farming about 12,000 years ago, though it would be another 8,000 years before the practice became a common approach across...

An overview of the anthropocene: the scale of human influence on Earth

Human activity has fundamentally changed our planet. We live on every continent and have directly affected at least 83% of the planet’s viable land surface.

What’s the best way to reduce climate impact of food?

Food is a big part of everyone’s carbon footprint, and it’s important to understand the impact of our personal food consumption. Individual food choices can emit as many greenhouse gases as personal electricity use. Plant-based diets generally...

How humans are engineering the planet

One fact about our time is becoming increasingly well-known. No matter how far you travel, no matter in which direction you point, there is nowhere on Earth that remains free from the traces of human activity.

Visualizing the world's food supply chains

The world's food supply chain is complex and lopsided, with much of the world's nutrient-rich food ending up in Europe and North America. This visualization illustrates the paths our food takes around the world, from starchy vegetables in...

Global life expectancy has more than doubled since the 1850s

The human species experienced a dramatic increase in expected lifespan over the past 150 years. Antibiotics, improved sanitation, and better worldwide food distribution are a few factors contributing to this rapid transformation. Use this interactive resource to explore longevity gains over time and compare these improvements across the globe.

Why is rice so popular?

From Spanish paella to West African jollof rice, rice is a staple in dishes across the world. This colorful animated video dives into the global expansion of rice, which contributes more than 20% of the calories consumed by humans each year. Learn about rice’s beginnings thousands of years ago, the environmental consequences of its popularity, and the potential for positive changes in the future.

What should you eat to help the climate?

Climate change is impacted by what we eat and what we don't eat. Did you know, for instance, that livestock accounts for 14.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases each year? Eating less meat and dairy and more protein-rich plants like beans,...

The era of advanced farming machines

Traditional agriculture, which for millennia was conducted primarily as subsistence farming by millions of workers, has been transformed since the industrial revolution. Agribusinesses continue to develop newer, more specific tools to streamline the...

Everything you need to know about demography in 10 graphs

This 17-minute video explains the future of the world through demographic data points. Dr. Paul Morland has published three books on demography. In this talk, he shows how demography is a powerful lens to view global transformations. Included are...

Genetic engineering has accelerated millennia of altering various crops' genes

Although farmers have long cross-bred crops to obtain plants with specific colors, sizes, and other characteristics, these processes took significant time. Today, genetic modification in agriculture involves scientists altering an organism's DNA for various purposes, including enhancing pathogen resistance, removing allergens, and delaying spoilage.

From 2001 to 2023, the need to expand cattle grazing pastures to meet global demand for beef has been the primary driver of deforestation.

Is human evolution speeding up or slowing down?

In the past 3,000 years, many populations have evolved genetic adaptations to their local environments. People in Siberia and the high arctic are uniquely adapted to survive extreme cold. The Bajau people can dive 70 meters and stay underwater for almost 15 minutes. So what are other recent changes? And will our technological innovations impact our evolution?

A primer on the environmental impact of fishing and overfishing

Learn why overfishing is a problem and what are some solutions to reduce fishing's environmental impact while maintaining vital sources of food and livelihoods.

Tracing the history of the philosophy of human extinction

Global catastrophe is at the center of much contemporary debate over climate, war, science, technology, and more, and our period is marked by a lurking sense everything we know—including the human species—could end overnight. It wasn't always...

Cells cannot grow forever due to escalating inefficiency in transporting chemicals

As cells get larger, their volume grows much faster than the surface area through which nutrients and waste products pass, creating a bottleneck that eventually causes cells to die. This forces nearly all organisms visible to the naked eye to comprise enormous numbers of smaller cells, such as the approximately 30 trillion found in the average adult human.

Eight demographic trends to watch

This list highlights eight demographic trends expected to shape the world in the coming decades. The world’s population is projected to hit 9 billion in 2037. In that time, India will overtake China in population, and the Democratic Republic of...

Climate shifts are projected to cause more cases of food poisoning

Research published in 2024 suggests that with more severe heatwaves and natural disasters, scientists expect there to be a rise in foodborne disease, especially in Africa and Asia. Already, there are an estimated 600 million food poisoning cases and 420,000 deaths annually. Diarrhea is the most common cause of those deaths.

There are five key mechanisms—small population size, nonrandom mating, mutation, gene flow, and natural selection—that drive evolution, or the change in the abundance of specific genetic traits found within a population.

How do we know what prehistoric humans ate?

Without recourse to ancient menus, how can historians know what our ancient human ancestors—as far as 3 million years ago—ate on a daily basis? Researchers evaluate several factors, including the type of teeth the species had evolved, chemical analysis of the teeth, patterns of wear and tear on teeth, as well as food scraps found in the vicinity of ancient remains. Learn the approach to discovering ancient hominin diets.

Visualize population densities around the world represented as geographic terrain and how those densities changed from 1900 to 1975 to 2015.

Explore the water footprint of producing various proteins, fruits, and vegetables

This interactive gallery highlights the various types of water behind the production of biofuels, foods, and materials such as cotton. Diets high in bovine meat, whose production requires 15,415 liters of water per kilogram (1,847 gallons per pound), are among the most water-intensive, whereas every kilogram of vegetables uses 322 liters of water (39 gal/lb) to produce.

South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are most at risk from falling pollinator numbers

Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that declines in pollinator populations would lead to higher rates of nutritional deficiencies, particularly in developing nations. Nations with large populations, such as China and India, would also be significantly impacted.