Overpopulation - Does Population Growth Follow Food Supply?
CategoriesOn a recent post of mine regarding the Aerospace Technology Working Group (ATWG), a series of comments brought to light an interesting train of thought on human overpopulation.
Steven Earl Salmony pointed out that according to an article of Russell P. Hopfenberg,
human population dynamics are common to the population dynamics of other species. This means the world's human population growth is a rapidly cycling positive feedback loop, a relationship between food and population in which food availability drives up population numbers, and increasing population fuels the mistaken impression, the misperception, that food production needs to be evermore increased. The data make clear increasing annual global food production gives rise to growing numbers of human beings.Hopfenberg is already starting out from the assumption that human population numbers are a problem. Granted, there are signs that we humans are a destructive influence on the environment, but my view is that the problem may not the growth of population numbers as such but our irresponsible and destructive ways that are determining a negative impact on the biosphere we live in.
After having bought the basic assumption that human population growth is bad (because of our impact on the earth's biosphere) Hopfenberg says the increase of population numbers is a direct consequence of an increase in the availability of food. But what if humans are really different from other species. After all, we are capable of responding to an increase in population by increasing our food supply, by finding new ways to feed ever more people. While availability of food has been shown to be a limiting factor for populations from microbes to mammals, perhaps this is not necessarily the case for humans.
What will limit human population growth however, is a collapse of "livable spaces", an ecological disaster on spaceship earth, which we are fast approaching and will sooner or later encounter, unless we decide to change our ways.
We have a definite problem with energy technologies, which rely on fossil fuels which are highly polluting. Our chemical and pharmaceutical industries are large scale producers of poisons that end up making us sick and yes, we also have problems with food production, based on shameless exploitation of other species - think about overfishing or the practice of keeping animals in feedlots for "meat production".
Food production seems to be concentrated, to a large part, in the hands of giant corporations. Genetic modification of common food plants and control of the world seed supply are some of the more advanced and largely criticized strategies to achieve food control. Large scale grain production and other "strategic" agricultural sectors are highly subsidized, in effect ruining the agricultural efforts of developing countries. The recent "G 20" meeting of the largest developing economies has called for an elimination of distorting agricultural subsidies.
Let's for a moment suppose that our major problem is not the number of humans but the way we feed them and the way we use energy in a highly polluting way. In an ideal world, humans would live in harmony with nature, respecting other species and the earth invironment and striving to leave as small a footprint as possible on that environment that in effect sustains our existence.
What's keeping us from going towards that goal? I believe we must look at how economy influences our choices. A corporate energy monopoly (oil) keeps us locked into an archaic energy technology. Corporate food production with the avowed purpose of "feeding the multitudes" is environmentally destructive and ends up putting small farmers out of work, effectively endangering, instead of ensuring food security - another monopoly in the making?
David Korten has described the mechanisms in his book "When Corporations Rule the World" and is proposing changes in his more recent "The Post-Corporate World".
Perhaps it is time to look for some serious solutions that are not based on corporate domination of our affairs.
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Here is the discussion as developed from my earlier article
Steven Earl Salmony on 3 March 2005:Please take note of apparently unforeseen scientific data regarding the human overpopulation of Earth. Russell P. Hopfenberg, Ph.D., has published articles indicating elegantly that human population dynamics are common to the population dynamics of other species. This means the world's human population growth is a rapidly cycling positive feedback loop, a relationship between food and population in which food availability drives up population numbers, and increasing population fuels the mistaken impression, the misperception, that food production needs to be evermore increased. The data make clear increasing annual global food production gives rise to growing numbers of human beings.
Perhaps, a new biological understanding with Dr. Hopfenberg's research. It is simply that the Earth's carrying capacity for human organisms, like that for other organisms, is determined by food availability. More food equals more people; less food equals less people; and no food, no people. Given its current scale and rate of growth, human population worldwide appears to be a huge problem, taking an ever-increasing toll on limited natural resources; nonetheless, we can take the measure of this problem and find a remedy that is consonant with universally shared human values.
Thanks for all you are doing to protect humanity from endangerment, biodiversity from extinction, and Earth from irreversible degradation.
My reply on 3 March 2005:thank you for pointing me to this most interesting publication by Russell Hopfenberg, Human Carrying Capacity is Determined by Food Availability.
Of course there are dangers in overpopulation and we should try to avoid those, but perhaps population control is not the only means at our disposal.
In my view, we have ample room for improvement in reducing the human "footprint" on the environment and sustain a population greater than the present one, with much reduced reliance on the resources that are available. New solutions in the energy field are a must in this respect.
Food is indeed a problem and perhaps new avenues of making nutritious food that do not rely so much on livestock and fishing should be found. I could imagine that with ingenuity, growth of population might be sustained into the future, with the important caveat of doing something about our weight on the planetary environment.
Steven Earl Salmony replies on 4 March 2005:Please note that there is another valuable article by Dr. Russell Hopfenberg (with David Pimentel). It is Human Population Numbers as a Function of Food Supply, ENVIRONMENT, DEVELOPMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY. 3: 1-15, 2001.
With every passing year, as food production is increased, leading to a population increase, millions more people go hungry. Why are those hungry millions (now numbering in the billions worldwide) not getting fed year after year after year....and may not ever be fed? Every year the global human population grows. All segments of it grow. The data in support of this understanding are uncomplicated and overwhelming. For example, every year there are more people with blue eyes, more people with brown eyes, more people with who are tall and more people who are short. It also means that there are more people growing up well-fed and more people growing up hungry. According to Dr. Hopfenberg's data, we are not bringing hunger to an end by ever increasing the food supply; instead, annual increases in food production give rise to more hungry people. Currently, data show us that there are more people existing on the planet on resources worth less than $2 per day than were alive on Earth in the year of my birth, 1945.
Is the human population bomb Dr. Paul Ehrlich identified for all of us exploding now?
My reply on 4 March 2005:Dear Steven,
Hopfenberg and Pimentel say:
"The increase in the number of humans is responsible for amounts of pollutants dumped into land, water, and atmosphere."
While this may be suggestive, it is far from the truth.
In my view it is not the increase of the number of humans that is responsible for pollution but our refusal to face the reality that we are part of an eco-system and that we cannot make unlimited demands on that system for our own survival and expansion.
Rather than population expansion itself, our mode of operation bears some looking into. We seem to be blinded by "economic realities" that dictate economy must expand to be healthy, and perhaps our over-production of food follows economic, rather than humanitarian (like in "we need to feed all those poor people") concerns. We are forced to expand production to satisfy the faulty expansionist maxim of a finance-driven debt economy.
Hunger seems to depend more on problems of distribution - and on a refusal of industrialized nations to support food production in developing nations - than on a real shortage of food. Distribution or rather distributed food production is hampered by the same economic maxims that blind us to our responsibility towards the environment. Rich nations subsidize their own
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