CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Aging (uh, mature) West Virginians can remember when terrible famines killed vast numbers of people. An estimated 30 million Chinese starved in a tragic food shortage from 1958 to 1961. In 1943, an estimated 4 million died in India's Bengal Famine. Stalin vengefully let famine devastate Ukraine in the 1930s.

But the Green Revolution doubled the world's food supply and mostly ended the era of famines (except for war-worsened tragedies in Biafra in the 1960s and Ethiopia in the 1980s). Iowa biologist Norman Bourlag developed high-yield dwarf wheat that flourished under intensive fertilization, irrigation and pesticide spraying. Fast-growing "miracle rice" joined the boom. Bourlag won a Nobel Prize.

But the Green Revolution has run its course, leaving behind tainted, burned-out cropland. Now the relentless growth of world population is threatening to bring hunger and poverty, if not renewed famines, according to the June <I>National Geographic<P>.

"Between 2005 and the summer of 2008, the price of wheat and corn tripled, and the price of rice climbed fivefold, spurring food riots in nearly two dozen countries and pushing 75 million more people into poverty," the magazine reports.

The price upsurges stemmed purely from the law of supply and demand. Agriculture output increases 1 percent to 2 percent per year, but it can't keep up with the population explosion that is expected to cram the planet with 9 billion people by 2050.

Global climate change is expected to reduce future crop yields, "raising the specter of what some scientists are now calling a perpetual food crisis," it said.

The Green Revolution lulled humanity into enjoying rich diets, laden with meats.

"Eating meat is an incredibly inefficient way to feed oneself," the <I>Geographic<P> says. "It takes up to five times more grain to get the equivalent amount of calories from eating pork as from simply eating grain itself -- 10 times if we're talking about grain-fattened U.S. beef."

Africa mostly was bypassed by the Green Revolution, but it's starting to catch up. Malawi President Bingu Mutharika said he didn't want to rule "a nation of beggars," so he spent $58 million for hybrid seeds and fertilizer for 1.3 million poor farm families. The result was the "Malawi Miracle" that doubled the food supply.

The Rockefeller and Gates foundations have pumped a half-billion dollars into the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, providing seeds and fertilizer to villages. Even more promising is a Malawi project in which peasants plant peanuts, pigeon peas or soybeans -- legumes that restore nitrogen to the soil, reducing the need for chemical fertilizers.

Researchers hope that gene-manipulation soon will create new plants that resist drought, frost and insects while producing bounty crops.

But the easiest way to deter future famines would be to slow the population surge. If birth control can restrain the soaring number of hungry mouths, it will be a blessing to humanity.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Aging (uh, mature) West Virginians can remember when terrible famines killed vast numbers of people. An estimated 30 million Chinese starved in a tragic food shortage from 1958 to 1961. In 1943, an estimated 4 million died in India's Bengal Famine. Stalin vengefully let famine devastate Ukraine in the 1930s.

But the Green Revolution doubled the world's food supply and mostly ended the era of famines (except for war-worsened tragedies in Biafra in the 1960s and Ethiopia in the 1980s). Iowa biologist Norman Bourlag developed high-yield dwarf wheat that flourished under intensive fertilization, irrigation and pesticide spraying. Fast-growing "miracle rice" joined the boom. Bourlag won a Nobel Prize.

But the Green Revolution has run its course, leaving behind tainted, burned-out cropland. Now the relentless growth of world population is threatening to bring hunger and poverty, if not renewed famines, according to the June <I>National Geographic<P>.

"Between 2005 and the summer of 2008, the price of wheat and corn tripled, and the price of rice climbed fivefold, spurring food riots in nearly two dozen countries and pushing 75 million more people into poverty," the magazine reports.

The price upsurges stemmed purely from the law of supply and demand. Agriculture output increases 1 percent to 2 percent per year, but it can't keep up with the population explosion that is expected to cram the planet with 9 billion people by 2050.

Global climate change is expected to reduce future crop yields, "raising the specter of what some scientists are now calling a perpetual food crisis," it said.

The Green Revolution lulled humanity into enjoying rich diets, laden with meats.

"Eating meat is an incredibly inefficient way to feed oneself," the <I>Geographic<P> says. "It takes up to five times more grain to get the equivalent amount of calories from eating pork as from simply eating grain itself -- 10 times if we're talking about grain-fattened U.S. beef."

Africa mostly was bypassed by the Green Revolution, but it's starting to catch up. Malawi President Bingu Mutharika said he didn't want to rule "a nation of beggars," so he spent $58 million for hybrid seeds and fertilizer for 1.3 million poor farm families. The result was the "Malawi Miracle" that doubled the food supply.

The Rockefeller and Gates foundations have pumped a half-billion dollars into the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, providing seeds and fertilizer to villages. Even more promising is a Malawi project in which peasants plant peanuts, pigeon peas or soybeans -- legumes that restore nitrogen to the soil, reducing the need for chemical fertilizers.

Researchers hope that gene-manipulation soon will create new plants that resist drought, frost and insects while producing bounty crops.

But the easiest way to deter future famines would be to slow the population surge. If birth control can restrain the soaring number of hungry mouths, it will be a blessing to humanity.