Population And Food

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¡§The United Nations projects that the global population, currently at 6 billion, will peak at about 10 billion in the next century and then stabilize or even decline.¡¨(popindex.Princeton.edu) A question immediately following the statement, can the Earth feed that many people? It is understood that even if food crops increase sufficiently, other renewable resources, including many fisheries and forests, are already under pressure. ¡§Our food production doubled from 1961 to 1994, but there are still people who go hungry.¡¨ (popindex.Princeton.edu) This is because the human population has increased more rapidly than the food production. One of the well-known economists Thomas Robert Malthus claimed that there was an imbalance between population growth and our ability to produce food. In his famous work, An Essay on the Principle of Population, his principle of population was based on three main points: population cannot increase without the means of subsistence; population invariable increases when the means of subsistence are available; and the superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice. When taking into account Malthus¡¦s principle of population it is evident that his fundamental analysis of population has been proven right.

Since the earth¡¦s resources are finite, when human population increases, it affects human beings. Will there be a problem if population keeps increasing? Rapid population growth and the technical development of society have led to difficulties for farmers worldwide to maintain this dual compatibility. In fact, today farmers face demands for a high productivity as well as environmentally sound, sustainable farming practices. Some economists believe human beings have the ability to produce enough food to feed all the people in the world, but according to Malthus¡¦s theory, this cannot happen. When the number of people keeps increasing while the amount of available food stays the same or even declines, human beings will face a scarcity of resources and overpopulation in the world. This is what happening right now. According to a well known biologist-Paul R. Ehrlich, who said ¡§The amount of food available restrains the size of any animal population, unless space, disease, predators, or some other factor sets lower limits¡¨(Ehrlich, 66). What he means is that food production is an element that contro...

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...ening in Chiapas, and also Sierra Leone, Burundi, Kenya, etc. The majority of hungry people live in developing countries since they are considered less important than people in developed countries. Even though Malthus¡¦ principle was printed about 201 years ago, generally, his principle is proven right today. Studies have shown that countries, which have huge populations, will experience misery. If human beings still ignore the problem of the population growth and the food supply, other problems will follow, such as civil strife and food shortages. Furthermore, rapid population growth may affect poverty by affecting the correlates of poverty: low wages, lack of human capital such as education and health, and lack of income earning assets such as land; income inequality and loss of economic growth. The only way to solve the problem between the population growth and the food supply is to reduce our population by using contraceptive tools. The other way is to distribute our food evenly to all people around the world. If food were distributed evenly to all people, famine will not happen. Now, it is time to face reality. It is time to change our world. It is time to solve our problem.

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