Global Population, Carrying Capacity, and High-Quality, High-Pressure Processed Foods in the Industrial Revolution Era

Agata Angelika Sojecka, Aleksandra Drozd-Rzoska () and Sylwester J. Rzoska ()
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Agata Angelika Sojecka: Department of Marketing, University of Economics in Katowice, ul. 1 Maja 50, 40-257 Katowice, Poland
Aleksandra Drozd-Rzoska: Institute of High Pressure Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Sokołowska 29/37, 01-142 Warsaw, Poland
Sylwester J. Rzoska: Institute of High Pressure Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Sokołowska 29/37, 01-142 Warsaw, Poland

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 15, 1-26

Abstract: The report examines food availability and demand in the Anthropocene era, exploring the connections between global population growth and carrying capacity through an extended version of Cohen’s Condorcet concept. It recalls the super-Malthus and Verhulst-type scalings, matched with the recently introduced analytic relative growth rate. It focuses particularly on the ongoing Fifth Industrial Revolution (IR) and its interaction with the concept of a sustainable civilization. In this context, the significance of innovative food preservation technologies that can yield high-quality foods with health-promoting features, while simultaneously increasing food quantities and reducing adverse environmental impacts, is discussed. To achieve this, high-pressure preservation and processing (HPP) can play a dominant role. High-pressure ‘cold pasteurization’, related to room-temperature processing, has already achieved a global scale. Its superior features are notable and are fairly correlated with social expectations of a sustainable society and the technological tasks of the Fifth Industrial Revolution. The discussion is based on the authors’ experiences in HPP-related research and applications. The next breakthrough could be HPP-related sterilization. The innovative HPP path, supported by the colossal barocaloric effect, is presented. The mass implementation of pressure-related sterilization could lead to milestone societal, pro-health, environmental, and economic benefits.

Keywords: global population; industrial revolution; carrying capacity; food resources; Condorcet equation; innovative high-pressure processing/preservation of foods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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