All Time Record: India Set For Best-Ever Foodgrain Production

India’s foodgrain production for the 2016-17 crop year is estimated at a record 275.68 million tonnes. The government on Wednesday revised its previous figures upward by 2.3 million tonnes and came at the new figure which is over 4% higher than the previous record production achieved in the country during 2013-14. —Times of India, 17 August 2017

India’s foodgrain production rose five times over six decades, according to 2016 government data, the latest available. Output of foodgrains in India increased from 50.82 million tonnes in 1950-51 to 252.22 million tonnes in 2015-16, according to the Agriculture Statistics At A Glance 2016 report. Yield increased as well, from 522 kg per hectare (ha) in 1950-51 to 2,056 kg/ha in 2015-16. —India Spend, August 2017

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. –Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, 1968

India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980. I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971. –Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, 1968

With luck, India might stagger on to the end of the century, but the train of events leading to the dissolution of India as a viable nation is already in motion. Paul R. Ehrlich, The End of Affluence, 1975

Grain harvest will grow this year 31.1 percent in Brazil with respect to 2016, and it will reach a record figure of 242.1 million tons, estimated the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics ( IBGE) today. Records on the soybean harvest (115 million tons) and corn (99.4) are also expected, said IBGE and stressed that these products and rice represent this year 93.6 percent of estimated products. —Prensa Latina, 10 August 2017

World wheat production in 2016 is expected to exceed the 2015 record by 1.2%, underpinned by output increases in India, the Russian Federation, and the U.S. World grains production will break records again this year. Although usage also is expected to rise, ending stocks will be higher and export availabilities will be ample. —World Grain, November 2016

The End Of The World Is Always 10 Years Away Unchecked population growth will result in widespread famine, multiple wars over dwindling resources, and will yield only social, economic, and environmental collapse. These were the key dead-certain predictions contained in the 1968 book The Population Bomb by Sanford University professor Paul R. Ehrlich.  While Ehrlich was wearing a The End is Near sandwich board, Norman Borlaug (d. 2009), a Lutheran sleeves-rolled-up agronomist from Minnesota, was working in Mexico, Pakistan, India and elsewhere. Mexico became a net wheat exporter in 1963. The Philippines became a rice exporter in 1968, for the first time in the 20th century. By 1970 India and Pakistan more than doubled their wheat production. India became a net exporter; Pakistan became Asia’s third largest grain producer, also an exporter, and Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work. Borlaug is often cited as “the man who saved a billion lives,” while Ehrlich, now nearing 86, argued in 2009, “Perhaps the most serious flaw in The Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future.” –Russel Saltzman, Aleteia, 10 August 2017

U.S. shale oil will prevail over OPEC as the two rivals compete in an oversupplied world market, Citigroup Inc.’s head of research said. —Bloomberg, 15 August 2017

Breaking: Drilling Begins At Cuadrilla’s Lancashire Shale Gas Site The shale gas firm, Cuadrilla has confirmed that drilling began today at its site at near Blackpool. The Preston New Road site at Little Plumpton will see the first horizontal shale gas exploration wells in the UK. —Drill or Drop, 17 August 2017