CHAPTER TWO 1.1 INTRODUCTION Increases in food production, per hectare of land, have not kept pace with increases in population, and the planet has virtually no more arable land or fresh water to spare. As a result, per-capita cropland has fallen by more than half since 1960, and per-capita production of grains, the basic food, has been falling worldwide for 20 years (Pimental and Wilson, 2004) Today, one of the world’s greatest challenge is the exploding population and combating poverty and hunger. Each day, more and more people are added to the world populace and this makes it more and more difficult to feed them. The problem is worsened as natural resources- fresh water, quality land, energy, minerals and habitats of plants and animals are
The purpose of doing this was to reduce the unit cost. Malthus proposed a theory in his first work called ‘'An Essay on the Principles of the Population.'' There was a very pessimistic picture about population growth in that case and he said that ‘'It is a shame to believe that population will grow endlessly without encountering any obstacles''. According to this theory, the population increases in the form of geometric series of 1,2,4,6,8,16,32… as foods increases 1,2,3,4,5,6… in the form of arithmetic series. Malthus said that the rate of population growth was much higher than the increase in food capacity needed for human nutrition, which inevitably creates a crisis.
It has been ignored for years, but now that it is starting to affect the community people are noticing. Harvard researcher, Mayuree Rao, said himself, “People often say that healthier foods are more expensive, and that such costs strongly limit better diet habits. (Rehel).” But, he wanted to prove it himself so he decided to do an experiment with his students in which he found that healthier foods cost significantly more in all ten countries that he pulled data from. This shows that no matter where you live a price gap between healthy and unhealthy foods exists. Today, the price increase in fruits and vegetables is 190% compared to the 70% increase in fats and oils (Saunders).
But environmental factors such as the production of these foods and economical factors such as the food industry’s earnings should also be taken into consideration regarding the problem of should fast foods be banned, limited or allowed in society? Currently the fast food industry in USA makes around 160 billion US dollars per year, along with around 3.7 million employees. Because of the fact it is such a huge industry, it has a lot of economic influence. This means that the decisions regarding this industry would have a huge impact on the economic system. Ever since the major growth of the fast food industry in 1970, for the past 30 years, the childhood obesity rate has quadrupled.
However, he also stated that we pay much more for other stuff in order to make that certain food. Cheap foods bring many harmful effects in fossil crisis, healthcare, and greenhouse. Pollan pointed out that 20% of fossil fuel is used to make food, and 500 billion dollars are spent on healthcare. And it is true that more and more people nowadays are obese compared to the past. However, we can’t ignore the fact that our lives today depend on technology.
Goldstone’s article in The New Population Bomb: The Four Megatrends That Will Change the World discussed that there are predictions about future overpopulation in 20 centuries. Moreover, since world population grow quickly, the result of world will change to mass starvation and issuing the other problems of global disasters. From the article, the United Nation Population division projects is that the growing global population will nearly by 2050. The point of problem is not only overpopulation, but also how to structure of the population with those who have power. Thus, Goldstone discussed how to make least developed countries in urbanization could be helping to out of economic and political, but his suggestion that making more population in rich countries is not the answer.
Contrary to what many proponents of GMO labeling believe, GMOs actually bring with them many benefits, some of which are already being seen. With the increase of genetically modified corn and soybeans in the united states, the amount of chemical usage has been greatly reduced, and farmers have made more money because they don’t have to buy pesticides (Lusk and Miller 2). GMOs also have promising benefits for solving the problems of the future. Out of the 7.5 billion people in the world today, nearly 1 billion are starving. The number of starving people is estimated to increase to an amount of 10 billion by 2050 (Mosely 578).
Almost all the human’s daily activities negatively impact the whole globe, and as the population increases, so does the damage (Duncan). The first cause of overpopulation is the decline in the world's populations death rates. The death rates are only 55.3 million per year; while the birth rates are 131.4 million per year. One could see that the number of deaths is almost half the number of births. However, if we had balanced birth and death rates together; they would cancel out each other.
The problem is to have total reduction in the environmental influence, also it is necessary that all the component in the PAT equation will be reduce. If P and A are increasing, the reduction in T will be sufficient enough to neutralize this growth. Economic growth can influence not only on technology (that Kuznets curve based on) but also on the growth per capita and population size. The economic growth of a country enables buying as well produce more food, which enables to increase the population growth. During the centuries from the Industrialize Revolution there the population size among the industrialized countries has ascended.
Visualize the world in the next hundred years, specifically the human race, with its immense population of about eleven billion with its advanced technological changes that spreads across the globe and let’s add in food production. Did you imagine the world to be perfect by having endless supply of successful crops to produce for everyone? Or a global famine which is happening in the present in some parts of the world with a widespread scarcity of food that may cause population imbalance, crop failure, war, government policies, starvation, increase in mortality I could go on. Unfortunately, this is a controversy we don’t know the ideal outcome, but we can always predict by looking into several factors: The possible future limitations of food