What does is mean to feed 9 billion people? The simplest answer to this question is that feeding 9 billion people means that nobody ever dies from starvation. Not only is this the simplest meaning in my mind this is the only possible answer for what it means to feed 9 billion people. I really don’t think a question like this needs to be open ended or open to various interpretations. What it means to feed 9 billion people, is simply that nobody every perishes from lack of nutrition. I think its very important that we have a clear and concise answer for what it means to feed 9 billion before we attempt to address this problem, and here’s an example why. Let’s say somebody’s answer to the question how do we feed 9 billion people is that we would produce enough food to feed everyone. At first examination, this might seem like an admirable and proper solution, but now let’s look at the fact that in America right now they already produce enough food to feed everyone but people still die from lack of nutrition. Why is this? The reason is that much of the food in America is either wasted or unfairly distributed. So, you see its not enough to just grow enough food for everyone we must also make sure we are responsible when managing and distributing it as well. On the other hand, someone may look at my answer to the question how do you feed 9 billion people and say, well just because someone’s not dying from lack of nutrition doesn’t mean that they are eating enough to be considered healthy or even fed. My response would be that the primary concern should be to make sure people aren’t dying first and then the secondary concern would be to make sure everyone was eating what would be eating enough to be considered a sufficiently healthy diet. Its also worth mentioning that a large portion of the developed world already don’t have healthy diets and this is largely through choice. Anyways, now that we have established what it means to feed 9 billion people we should now look at some of the challenges and barriers to accomplishing this goal, because there are certainly many of them such as food waste, lack of cooperation between people and between nations, land management, resource management, climate change, animal welfare, dietary preference, corporate interest and many more. Out of all these challenges though I believe one stands out as the most problematic and that is the corporate involvement in food production and the idea that the rights to human life can be owned and distributed. Due to the nature of economics and supply and demand I strongly believe that any effort to feed 9 billion people that is driven by profit is doomed to fail. The reason being is that profit relies on scarcity. If food were suddenly to become abundant in nature it would put nearly every grocery store and food production company out of business overnight. This is why I feel so strongly about the fact that the goal to feed 9 billion should never be allowed to be overseen by anyone who stands to profit from it. Instead the goal of feeding 9 billion people would have to be a collective and conscious effort of a very large number of people working together for the sole purpose of wanting to help one another. This leads me in to my next point which is a controversial topic but extremely relevant, and that is the issue of veganism or animal consumption. I remember reading not to long ago that if every person on the planet ate as much meat as the average North American, we would have to use every single piece of land on the planet to raise livestock and it still wouldn’t be enough. Another shocking fact around the same lines as the last is that we have enough food to feed 70 billion livestock every year but not enough to feed every person.  If these claims are scientifically valid, which in my opinion they are. The only logical conclusion to be drawn from this is that the greatest challenge to feeding 9 billion people, without a doubt, is animal agriculture. What this means is that the earth could easily support 9 billion vegans but it wouldn’t even be close to being able to support 7 billion North Americans. During this weeks class when the presenter came in to talk about the children being born with small heads in Tanzania, somebody asked a question about birth control. This brings me to my next and final point is that a child born to a woman in Santa Cruz will use 800-1000 times more resources than a child born to a woman in Bangladesh. Where do we preach birth control? Bangladesh. My point is that western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of the planet and the only way to save it and to feed everyone is if we take a seriously look at our lifestyle and realize the destructive effect we are having on the world and the people living in it. So, then what feeding 9 billion people really means to me is the death of the westernized American as we now know him/her.