Paul Ehrlich ignores abundance again.

From 1980 to 2020, global population increased 75.8 percent while global food abundance increased by 665.1 percent.

Paul Ehrlich recently complained in the journal Nature that overpopulation was not mentioned as a factor in a recent UN summit on food. In 1968 Ehrlich published The Population Bomb and claimed that “The battle to feed all of humanity is over … hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Recall that Ehrlich famously lost $576.07 to Julian Simon in 1990 when he made a 10-year bet that five basic metals would increase in price. The five-metal basket actually fell by an average of 36 percent. It is true that there are places on the planet that are suffering from food shortages, but these tend to be temporary or politically driven. The fact is, food has never been more abundant. More people are enjoying more calories from a greater variety of food than any time in history.

Ehrlich made his bet with Simon in 1980, so let’s look at what’s happened with food abundance since that date. The World Bank and the IMF track global prices on 24 basic food prices from bananas to wheat, coffee to rice, and salmon to sugar. We first calculated the “time price” for each of these food items each year. Time prices are superior to money prices for a host of reasons. A time price is simply the amount of time required to earn the money to buy an item. Money prices are expressed in dollars and cents and time prices are expressed in hours and minutes. Time prices are the ratio of the nominal price divided by hourly income. We estimated global hourly income by calculating GDP per Hour Worked using data from the World Bank and the Conference Board.

Let’s look at wheat for an example of how time prices work. The nominal price of a metric ton of wheat in 1980 was $172.73 and GDP per hour worked was $3.24, indicating a time price of 53.38 hours. In 2020 the nominal price had increased to $212.01 per metric ton but GDP per hour increased the $16.60, so the time price had decreased to 12.77 hours. This represents a 76.1 percent decrease. For the time required to earn the money to buy one ton of wheat in 1980, you would get 4.18 tons in 2020. This would be a 317.9 percent increase in wheat abundance. This increase occurred over a 40-year period indicating a 3.64 percent compound annual growth rate. At this rate, wheat abundance would double every 19.39 years.

While the average nominal price of these 24 basic foods increased by 35.1 percent, the average time price decreased by 77 percent. Not a single item increased in time price. Bananas decreased by 37.5 percent while sugar decreased by 86.2 percent. What this means is that for the time required to buy one basket of these items in 1980, you would get 4.35 baskets in 2020. Personal food abundance increased by an astonishing 335.2 percent since 1980. Food abundance is increasing at a compound rate of 3.75 percent a year. At this rate, abundance doubles every 18.85 years.

Measuring Global Food Abundance

We can think of global food resources as the product of personal food abundance multiplied by how many people there are. This can be illustrated in a graph with population on the horizontal axis and food abundance on the vertical axis. If we index 1980 population to a value of one and food abundance to a value of one, the 1980 global food would be a one by one box. This is represented by the red box.

We then draw 2020 as a green box. From 1980 to 2020 global population increased 75.8 percent from 4.434 billion to 7.795 billion. Population on the horizontal axis increases from a value of 1 in 1980 to 1.758 in 2020. As noted earlier, during this same period, personal food abundance as measured in time prices increased by 335.2 percent. Personal food abundance increases on the vertical axis from a value of 1 in 1980 to 4.352 in 2020. The result is that global food abundance increased to a value of 7.651 in 2020. (1.758 x 4.352). Overlaying the 1980 red box on the 2020 green box shows that global food abundance grew 665.1 percent from an indexed value of one in 1980 to a value of 7.651 in 2020.

Food Abundance Elasticity of Population

Now we turn to the relationship between food abundance and population. Over this 40-year period personal food abundance increased by 335.2 percent while global food abundance increased 665.1 percent. Recall that population increased by 75.8 percent. Every one percent increase in population corresponded with a 4.42 percent increase in personal resource abundance and an 8.77 percent increase in global resource abundance. It’s as if more people are bringing exponentially more food with them to share with the rest of us. Ehrlich is stuck in the 60s but Malthus would instantly renounce his theory if he visited a Walmart today.

Conclusion

The lesson for Ehrlich and company is don’t bet against human beings that are free to create and innovate. While there are still lots of problems on our planet, we have made astonishing progress in lifting ourselves out of poverty and feeding one another.

Excerpt from our forthcoming book, Superabundance.

Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a board member at Human Progress