This article reports on and analyzes long-term projections of world food requirements compared with observed 2000 data reported by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. The importance of this “post-mortem” is to strengthen the case for carrying out long-term projections of essential resources—food, energy, and non-fuel minerals— because of the long-lead times needed to insure that adequate global output levels of these basic ingredients of living standards will be met. This study should prove useful to those preparing today’s long-term projections, with world population projected to rise to over 9bn by mid-century.