Vaclav Smil is one of the leading academics and authors on energy, food, materials, and their global policies and impacts. Also, he has extensively written about biological, social and economic growth patterns and Cycles. wikipedia 
.
We do like to consult him on these topics for Smil's writings usually are well-documented in terms of facts, qualities, and quantities. Also, he is one of the rare authors that has extensively published about the relationships between food, energy, materials and population size, giving deep insights in how trends in one domain affects trends in other realsm.
Books I read by Vaclav Smil
Smil, Vaclav. How The World Really Works. A Scientist's Guide to Our Past, Present and Future., 2022.