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174 GÁBOR PIRISI would not be too mistaken to say that the rate of those living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2020. Food production could also keep pace with population growth: FAO data reveal that from 1960 to 2020, the available calories per capita per day rose from 2200 kcal to 3000 kcal, and even the poorest countries registered an increase of about 1590. In the broadening of food production, extensive agriculture has played an important role, which means the increase of arable land to the detriment of natural ecosystems. Food increase also has intensive components: between 1960 and 2020, the global average yield of wheat per hectare increased 3.4-fold, that of maize 2.8-fold, that of rice 2.3-fold, that of soybeans 2.5-fold (World Bank). In principle, this growth is far from over: it will still take a long time to spread the technologies that most effectively utilize the environmental resources worldwide, thus further giving a considerable boost to food production. All things considered, there is no reason to presume that we would not be able to produce enough food for nine or ten billion people on the Earth (Seekell et al. 2017). Famine and malnutrition repeatedly appear on a regional scale, always in countries that are poor and incapable of acquiring locally absent foodstuffs from the global market. In 2022, when this paper is being written, the extreme droughts affecting the northern hemisphere and the Russian-Ukrainian war devastating the croplands of Eastern Europe are putting the food system of the world to the test. The soaring of food prices is only an annoyance and inconvenience to the majority of the population in developed countries, forcing them to economize at most. However, it may have grave consequences for the least developed countries, which are reduced to food imports. This also confirms that the question of subsistence should be interpreted in economic terms: at what price can sufficient food be produced for ten billion people? There are some more menacing contradictions which loom large on the horizon in the near future. The best antidote to population growth, as we have seen, is economic growth and modernization. This, however, entails an increase in per capita consumption, meaning growing demand for food. It is true that economic growth will also enable people to buy food at higher prices. At the same time, growing welfare generates demand for other goods as well: durable commodities such as transport vehicles, their fuel, and the costs of growing mobility will all tax the Earth's limited resources. Nowadays, we are already familiar with the concept of the ecological footprint, which compares the resource needs of human consumption with the area required for their production. At present, this index shows 1.7-fold overconsumption globally. A similar indicator is the Earth Overshoot Day, which in 2022 was reached on 29 July, from which day not the yield but the capital is consumed for the remainder of the year. This has led us to the heart of the problem: can we satisfy the consumption needs of ten billion people without the collapse of the climate of our planet? or, to put it more sharply: despite all the destruction we have wrought on the biosphere, and despite all the damage that human-induced climate change causes to our agricultural systems, will we be able to satisfy these needs (Ray et al. 2019; Rockström et al. 2009; Schneider et al. 2011)? This is the issue that will determine global development in the next decades. If we cannot find a good solution, the struggle for the redistribution of resources may become all too real. In our common future, demographic questions play a key role, but the issue of
