Chronic warnings that the world is running out of food have been overblown for years, when the reality is that the global food supply has been growing for decades, according to a report on NPR.

The long-term trend has been for more food at lower prices, and there is no reason to believe that this will change in the immediate future, according to the segment on NPR’s All Things Considered. From 1900 to 2000, the world’s population quadrupled, but food prices in 2000 were only about one-third, in constant dollars, what they were in 1900, due mostly to advances in agricultural technology.

Nevertheless, agricultural experts and others periodically warn about an impending food crisis.

“Ill bet Ive been to 50 talks in the last five, 10 years wher the beginning is, ‘We have to feed 9 billion people by 2050. This is a crisis situation,” a Cornell economist told NPR. “The word ‘crisis’ gets used regularly.”

Motivations for this exaggeration include farmers wanting subsidies and wishing to avoid regulations over issues like water pollution, and scientists simply wanting attention. Contemporary food shortages, say the experts quoted by NPR, are usually caused by consumers mired in poverty or being denied access to food by war or other political disruption – not by lack of food.