Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?
The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse
By Lester R. Brown Scientific American Magazine April 22, 2009

One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis.
For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous (absurdo). Who would not find it hard to think seriously about such a complete departure from what we expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed(prestar atenção) a warning so dire(terrível, extremista)—and how would we go about responding to it? We are so inured (acostumado)to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed to dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into(transformar em) chaos—and Earth might collide with an asteroid, too!
For many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions. The combined effects of those trends and the political tensions they generate point to the breakdown of governments and societies. Yet I, too, have resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global civilization.
I can no longer ignore that risk. Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy—most important, falling water tables(plato,lista de informações)), eroding soils and rising temperatures—forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible.