Lester Russell Brown's Books

Originally published in 1995, but with enduring relevance in a time of global population growth and food insecurity, when it was first published, this book attracted much global attention, and criticism from Beijing. It argued that even as water becomes scarcer in a land where 80% of the grain crop is irrigated, as per-acre yield gains are erased by the loss of agricultural land to industrialization, and as food production stagnates, China still increases its population by the equivalent of a new Beijing each year. This book predicts that in an integrated world economy, China’s rising food prices will become the world’s rising food prices. China’s land scarcity will come everyone’s land scarcity and water scarcity in China will affect the entire world. China’s dependence on massive imports, like the collapse of the world’s fisheries, will be a wake-up call that we are colliding with the earth’s capacity to feed us. Over time, Janet Larsen argued, China’s leaders came to ‘acknowledge how Who Will Feed China? changed their thinking..’ As China’s wealth increases, so do the dietary demands of its population. The increasing middle classes demand more grain-intensive meat and farmed fish. The issue of who will feed China has not gone away.

To feed its 1.2 billion people, China may soon have to import so much grain that this action could trigger unprecedented rises in world food prices. In Who Will Feed China: Wake-up Call for a Small Planet, Lester Brown shows that even as water becomes more scarce in a land where 80 percent of the grain crop is irrigated, as per-acre yield gains are erased by the loss of cropland to industrialization, and as food production stagnates, China still increases its population by the equivalent of a new Beijing each year. When Japan, a nation of just 125 million, began to import food, world grain markets rejoiced. But when China, a market ten times bigger, starts importing, there may not be enough grain in the world to meet that need - and food prices will rise steeply for everyone. Analysts foresaw that the recent four-year doubling of income for China's 1.2 billion consumers would increase food demand, especially for meat, eggs, and beer. But these analysts assumed that food production would rise to meet those demands. Brown shows that cropland losses are heavy in countries that are densely populated before industrialization, and that these countries quickly become net grain importers. We can see that process now in newspaper accounts from China as the government struggles with this problem.

A bold new plan for those concerned about rising temperatures, population projections, and spreading water scarcity.

The global trends documented in Vital Sings 1999--from a decline in nuclear power generating capacity to the proliferation of genetically modified crops--will play a large part in determining the quality of our lives and our children's lives in the next decade.

On the bicentennial of Malthus's legendary essay on the tendency for population to grow more rapidly than the food supply, the question facing the world is not whether population growth will slow, but how.

An indispensable guide for anyone concerned with the future of life on our planet.

Companion to: State of the world.

Describes an environmental research team's plan for a global economy.

Exploring the link between population growth and the availability of food stocks, this study warns of the seriousness of the problem if future food stores are depleted, or fail to provide enough for all. The authors argue that effective, long-term population policies must be adopted rapidly.

In this, the seventh volume in the Worldwatch Environmental Alert series, Lester Brown observes that prices were climbing because world carryover stocks of grain had fallen to 48 days of consumption, the lowest level on record. Production was falling behind demand.

Provides alternative solutions to such global problems as population control, emerging water shortages, eroding soil, and global warming, outlining a detailed survival strategy for the civilization of the future.

First Published in 2011. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Describes an environmental research team's plan for a global economy.

Book's by Lester Russell Brown

Who Will Feed China?

Who Will Feed China?

Who Will Feed China?

Who Will Feed China?

Plan B

Plan B

Who Will Feed China?

Who Will Feed China?

Vital Signs 1999

Vital Signs 1999

Beyond Malthus

Beyond Malthus

State of the World 2001

State of the World 2001

Vital Signs 2000

Vital Signs 2000

Saving the Planet

Saving the Planet

Full House

Full House

Tough Choices

Tough Choices

Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Substantially Revised)

Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Substantially Revised)

World on the Edge

World on the Edge

Saving the Planet

Saving the Planet

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email