THE END OF PLENTY: The Race to Feed a Crowded World

In the late 18th century, Robert Malthus, an English cleric and scholar, observed in his Essay on the Principle of Population that sooner or later the world's growing population would be checked by famine and disease. Then in the mid twentieth century along came the Green Revolution, in which intensive pesticide and fertilizer usage in conjunction with new high yield crop varieties, made it possible to feed an ever expanding global population. Or so it seemed.

On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Joel K. Bourne Jr, a contributing writer for National Geographic, and author of THE END OF PLENTY: The Race to Feed a Crowded World, about the unintended and often devastating consequences of the Green Revolution on farmers in India, Africa and Latin America, and what options we still might have to stave off mass hunger on a global scale.

Joel K. Bourne Jr. graduated with a BS in agronomy from North Carolina State University. A contributing writer for National Geographic, he has written for Audubon, Science, and Outside, among others. He lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.