Food Supplies and Population Growth

Economic development and growth of population in Asia have caused an increase in the demand for food. On the other hand, disappearing the cultivation area and global warming have caused a decrease in the supply for food. In 1995, China imported cereals from U. S. A for the first time.To understand the future of Asia, it is required to make a model which concerns about reciprocal action among demand for food, supply for food, environment, economic development. This study proposes a model based on ecology and economics.For example, this study includes a model based on income producing processes. Income is obtained from a calculation involving capital and labor using the Cobb-Douglas function. These data for income is then used to calculate the demand for food.

This commentary reviews total aquatic food supply from aquaculture and capture fisheries from 2010 to 2020 at global, regional, and national levels within main producing countries; aquatic animal foods include fish, crustaceans, molluscs, and other invertebrate animals destined for direct human consumption or as fish and seafood by the FAO. Whilst total combined aquatic animal food supply from aquaculture and capture fisheries has increased on a global basis from 18.59 to 20.49 kg/capita over the past decade, the global supply has not kept up with population growth over the same period. Of particular concern was the decrease in fish and seafood food supply within the African region, decreasing from 10.40 to 9.58 kg/capita, whilst population growth increased by 3.12%/year over the same period. Moreover, the Asian region was the only region where per capita fish and seafood food supply exceeded population growth; the bulk of fish and seafood supply being sourced from increased aquaculture production of primarily freshwater fish species, compared with other regions where marine wild fisheries still dominated fish and seafood supply. Fish and seafood supply in leading aquaculture and capture fisheries producing countries between 2010 and 2020, including China, Indonesia, India, Viet Nam, Bangladesh, South Korea, Japan, and USA are presented and demonstrate growth in per capita fish and seafood supply being lower than human population growth in Ecuador, Philippines, Turkey, Chile, Norway, Brazil, Myanmar, the South Korea, and Japan. If aquatic food supplies from aquaculture and inland/marine capture fisheries are to make an increasing global contribution to healthy diets, then the increased production and market availability of these products needs to be promoted by governments and actively encouraged and stimulated, particularly within the African continent.

The population growth and demand for high living standard not only increase food demand but also cause more loss of the limited cultivated land resources. Cultivated land loss caused by disasters and the implementation of the "Conversion of Cropland to Forest or Grassland" project make this situation even worse in China. Thus, there is a problem to be solved imminently that to what extent the cultivated land can guarantee food security of China. Based on time-series data on food production and cultivated land area from 1989 to 2003 and other research results, this paper constructs quality index of cultivated land according to different land quality. Regression models are adopted to predicate changes of main factors from 2004 to 2030, which have great effect on cultivated land area or grain productivity, and verify accuracy with coefficient of determination (R(2)). Nine results were got according to three scenarios of decreasing rate of population growth rate and three cases of urban and rural built-up area per capita. There results show that China's food supply can only be maintained at a low to middle level of 370-410kg per capita, that is, China has enough land productivity to meet primary demand of food independently. However, it cannot reach the safe target of 500kg per capita if there is no breakthrough in breeding or no remarkable improvement of irrigation works, when the grain self-sufficiency maintains no less than 80%. To breed productive crops and to improve land productivity by meliorating low quality cultivated land are appropriate measures to shrink the gap between food demand and supply. The results may offer helpful information for the formulation of policies on population growth, land use, protection of cultivated land.

HISTORICALLY, EACH MAJOR INHABITED region of the earth has produced its own food supply, and generally, agricultural production has kept pace with population growth. As populations have grown, however, crop failure from drought, flood, or whatever cause, in a given region necessarily affects increasing numbers of people. Estimates are that somewhat less than 2 million humans starved to death in the 17th century, 10 million in the 18th century, 25 million in the 19th century, and perhaps 12 million thus far in the 20th century. Were it not for improved communications, early warnings, the remarkable productivity of North American agriculture, and a worldwide food distribution capability, agriculture in the 20th century might well fail to keep pace with the world population growth of 2 percent per year, and major regional crop failures could now claim more lives than at any time in the past. We have entered a period of great international anxiety about the world's ability to feed its growing population. In 1972, the world food situation was transformed from one of food surpluses and low prices to one of relative food scarcity and high prices. This rapid reversal has raised again a wave of widespread food, population pessimism similar to that which has swept over the world several times since Thomas Malthus wrote his influential essay in 1789. A wide spectrum of opinion exists about the causes of this rapid change in the world food situation and its likely development in the future. One view is that we have reached the limit of the world's ability to feed even our present numbers adequately. Another view is that the events of the early 1970s signal a fundamental shift in the structure of the world's food economy that has led to a period of more or less chronic scarcity and high food prices. The soaring demand for food, spurred on by both continuing population growth and rising affluence, has begun to outrun the productive capacity of the world's farmers and fishermen. If this is the case, the limits to expansion of our food supply will require efforts to reduce consumption by the world's rich to feed the world's poor. A third opinion is that although the situation will be precarious for the next year or two, the factors that combined to cause it can be overcome. In this view, to which I subscribe, food production during the next decade will keep a half a step ahead of population growth, but there will be times and places of critical shortage. This last view is corroborated by a recent United Nations study, a study by the economic research service of the United States Department of Agriculture and a committee of the National Academy of Sciences and National Science Foundation, which I chaired. This committee considered the primary issue in balancing the food-population equation is an early reduction in the population growth rate and the attainment of population equilibrium as soon as possible. The factors that influence the population-food balance may be grouped into those relating to population, to agricultural resources, and to the more general features of the world food system. The main purpose of this article is to describe briefly some of these factors and what I believe can be done about correcting a potentially explosive situation.

The analysis described here was carried out in response to a political crisis in Australia. In 1994, a Member of Parliament who opposed the use of foreign aid funds for family planning programs blocked the passage of the national budget. The impasse was resolved through a compromise. The use of foreign assistance for population activities was frozen pending an independent inquiry into the impact of population on economic development. A team of nine researchers prepared background papers on population and economic development, health, education, food supply, housing, poverty, the environment, family planning, and human rights. The overall conclusion of the inquiry was that slower population growth will yield more rapid development in most countries, especially in relatively poor, agricultural nations. The purpose of this contribution to the inquiry was to assess how population growth was affecting the housing sector and, in turn, economic development. Among other questions, does population growth increase the demand for residential land, housing, and urban infrastructure? Demographic methods were critical to answering the questions, especially assessing the impact of population growth on the demand for housing.

This review was intended to explore the interplays between environmental change and rapid population growth in developing countries. In the course of discussion, the impacts of rapidly growing population on the environment have been discussed, and evidence, from various parts of the world has been traced. We have surveyed a wide array of literature with an emphasis from the past decades and focused on the population-environment research. Indeed, the most salient findings depicting global trends in population, energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, or land area deforested has often been used to demonstrate the impact that population has on the environment. It also revealed that all across the developing countries, farm size is shrinking as farmers continue to subdivide holdings among their children. In countries such as Malawi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Haiti, Nepal and Bangladesh, population growth rates are high, and the non-farm sector is still in its early stages of development. Demographic pressure, land scarcity, and land fragmentation drive greater rural vulnerability and poverty, marked by decreased food security, inadequate response to such natural disasters such as drought or pest infestations, weakened resilience to shocks, and poor health. It is not just the supply of food, fodder, and fuel wood but the resource base itself and the lives that depend upon it are being affected. Most of developing country has a comparatively high land/population ratio, but appears to be particularly vulnerable to problems induced by population growth. Smallholders are experiencing problems in gaining access to land due to serious completion on the resource. The evidences pinpoints that man through his non-sustainable production and consumption patterns, is placed at the heart of environmental changes. However, contradictory views, and practices are also in place that the population growth has positive impacts environmental restoration and improvements, while other evidences show insignificant effect of population on the environment. This contradicting scenario puts scholars in argument, and still need further research. However, the policy makers should start looking into measures to population growth unless one can only foresee Malthusian laws taking in charge of current situation in developing countries.

Spatially diverse trends in population growth, climate change, industrialization, urbanization and economic development are expected to change future food supply and demand. These changes may affect the suitability of land for food production, implying elevated risks especially for resource-constrained, food-importing countries. We present the evolution of biophysical redundancy for agricultural production at country level, from 1992 to 2012. Biophysical redundancy, defined as unused biotic and abiotic environmental resources, is represented by the potential food production of ‘spare land’, available water resources (i.e., not already used for human activities), as well as production increases through yield gap closure on cultivated areas and potential agricultural areas. In 2012, the biophysical redundancy of 75 (48) countries, mainly in North Africa, Western Europe, the Middle East and Asia, was insufficient to produce the caloric nutritional needs for at least 50% (25%) of their population during a year. Biophysical redundancy has decreased in the last two decades in 102 out of 155 countries, 11 of these went from high to limited redundancy, and nine of these from limited to very low redundancy. Although the variability of the drivers of change across different countries is high, improvements in yield and population growth have a clear impact on the decreases of redundancy towards the very low redundancy category. We took a more detailed look at countries classified as ‘Low Income Economies (LIEs)’ since they are particularly vulnerable to domestic or external food supply changes, due to their limited capacity to offset for food supply decreases with higher purchasing power on the international market. Currently, nine LIEs have limited or very low biophysical redundancy. Many of these showed a decrease in redundancy over the last two decades, which is not always linked with improvements in per capita food availability.

Food wedges: Framing the global food demand and supply challenge towards 2050

For the past 20 years Julian Simon was among the most prominent economists involved in analyzing the relationship between population and development and the most prolific commentator on issues of public policy regarding population growth. In the wake of Simons death on February 8 1998 at age 65 years the author reviews his contributions to the debate on population growth. Julian Simon worked to show that population growth is not necessarily detrimental to human welfare and that policies directly aimed at slowing population growth are wrong. Simon was engaging entertaining and often infuriating but sometimes illuminating and profound and always challenging. His contributions to the population debate are discussed in sections on the overall postwar population debate recent work on the impact of population growth population growth and the environment people as the ultimate resource and food supplies.

Factors which influence birthrates and population growth are examined and how population growth in turn influences economic progress in underdeveloped nations is described. In the early part of this century population growth was much more rapid in developed than in underdeveloped areas. Currently the population of the underdeveloped areas is growing at a rate of about 2% annually compared with only a little over 1% in developed areas. The following 7 factors associated with birth and death rates are discussed and how they may be changing is noted: 1) the amount of inanimate energy consumed as an index of technical and economic development 2) income 3) food supply and quality 4) education and literacy 5) urbanization and industrial composition 6)participation of women in the work force and 7) the association of high death rates with high fertility rates. Population growth affects the rate of economic development and the individualss standard of living. Any population growth will retard per capita income unless it is accompanied by an increase in goods and services and a surplus to be used for capital reinvestment. 6-8% of net national output must be allocated for investment simply to keep up with a population growth of 2% a year. In order to produce more goods and services the output per worker must be increased: this can only be done through industrialization. Through the process of economic development labor can be utilized more efficiently. As each worker produces more the standard of living rises. If the present rate of population growth continues the population of the underdeveloped world could increase by 100% to 175%. It is difficult to make an economy grow at a rate much faster. Fertility levels must be reduced if significant economic progress is to be made. Factors which might help lower fertility levels are the growth of the economy increased education heightened aspirations and the availability of birth control information.

Population growth in Pakistan is alarming. The long and continuing shortage of foodgrains at intervals and increasing competition for land use have resulted in deterioration in yield per hectare, and low reproduction of livestock, although hard struggle is going on for self sufficiency. The margin in food supply has arrived even in those areas where the production has been abundant, and vulnerable to crop failure and other emergency causes. Provision against these dangers call for the maintenance of adequate national reserves, which can be brought into action at an early stage of the emergency. The area under agriculture can be increased through improved programmes of soil conservation and development of barani (rain fed areas) with cost-benefit consideration. Several million hectares of barani areas have fertile soils and are suitable for agricultural development. It has been estimated that 45 billion m3 of river water flows into the Arabian Sea. A part of the water sources is properly harnessed and could possibly change the economic conditions of the barani region. A number of regions are covered by hard texture of the soil, mechanization will have to be introduced in these areas to increase production much beyond the level of margin. Soil conservation measures have already been initiated and in some cases demonstrated to farmers, but the reclaimed virgin lands up to 1973 were very little, just 46.5 ha of virgin lands and 72 ha of cultivated area from the Soan and Potwar uplands. It is expected that 300,000 ha of cultivated area, 10,000 ha of gullied land will be reclaimed through soil conservation methods in the current Fifth Year Plan. Pakistan has great water potential. The remedy lies in wise judicious and scientific water management. Inadequate natural and artificial drainage systems are causing water-logging and salinity. An accelerated programme for recovering lost land is already in operation. Many land reforms were introduced from time to time, but the production result is not of great significance. Restrictions were imposed on consolidated holdings. The economic level of such holding above subsistence have not yet been taken into consideration. It is, therefore, necessary, to make a thorough analysis of agricultural problems, particularly with the foodgrain crops, with reference to population growth, the efforts should continue till the food supply occupies the supreme position by increasing production and reducing the rate of population growth by adopting socio-economic methods.

Herman Daly pioneered the concept of environmental macroeconomics. He famously argued that we have moved from an “empty world” of resource abundance to a “full world” of energy and resource limits. His insights, however, have generally been rejected or ignored by most mainstream economic analysts, who argue that resource shortages are remediable through market flexibility and substitution, posing no threat to long-term exponential economic growth. In the absence of immediate crisis, standard economics has been able to maintain this “optimistic” stance, dismissing population, resource, and energy limits. But developments during the first decade of the twenty-first century indicate that it will be Daly’s view, rather than that of the mainstream, that will be most important in shaping economic development in the coming century. As Daly foresaw, an energy economy based on high efficiency and renewable fuels cannot pursue the exponential growth path characteristic of the fossil-fuel dependent economy of the twentieth century. The issues involved go well beyond the energy sector of the economy. Population growth and food supply also become critical. There are many interactions between the agricultural and energy systems; in addition to energy intensification in agriculture, demands for biofuels put pressure on the limited supply of agricultural land. Recent price spikes in food, fuels, and minerals indicate the tremendous stresses placed on the global ecosystem by the combination of population and economic growth in China, India, and elsewhere. They also raise major issues of equity, as high prices for energy and food impact the poor disproportionately. Similar problems affect ecological systems such as forests and fisheries on a global scale. It will not be possible to adjust to such stresses simply through market flexibility. It is already evident that large-scale government intervention will be needed to respond to climate change. In this context, an activist environmental macroeconomics will be required to balance the requirements of equity and ecosystem sustainability. Either through planned adjustment or through crisis, it will be necessary to shift away from a macroeconomics of indefinite growth towards stabilization of population and reduction of resource throughput, as Daly has long advocated.

Food industry and engineering—Quo vadis?

In this paper we review and integrate key aspects of behavioral and life history traits, food supply and population dynamics of the white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus), a species that is abundant and widely distributed across much of eastern North America. Results are based largely on a 33-year mark-and-recapture study in a forest fragment in northwest Ohio, USA. Behavioral plasticity in such reproductive traits as mating system and parental care allows this species to adjust quickly to changing environments. The species has a relatively "fast" life history, with rapid attainment of sexual maturity and high fecundity in the face of high mortality rates. Maximal reproductive effort early in life enables a rapid population response. Food supply, in the form of mast, determines the size of the reproducing population in early spring, which, in turn, influences the size of the late summer peak population. The peak population size is also affected by short-term weather events possibly acting via the food supply. The effects of weather and food on population growth are in part mediated through competition, including defense of space and suppression of reproduction. The inelasticity of female territories appears to set an upper limit to population density.

Understanding the spatiotemporal characteristics of trade-offs and synergies among multiple ecosystem services (ESs) is the basis of sustainable ecosystem management. The ecological environment of valley basins is very fragile, while bearing the enormous pressure of economic development and population growth, which has damaged the balance of the ecosystem structure and ecosystem services. In this study, we selected two typical valley basins—Guanzhong Basin and Hanzhong Basin—as study areas. The spatial heterogeneity of trade-offs and synergies among multiple ESs (net primary production (NPP), habitat quality (HQ), soil conservation (SC), water conservation (WC), and food supply (FS)) were quantified using the correlation analysis and spatial overlay based on the gird scale to quantitatively analyze and compare the interaction among ESs in two basins. Our results found that: (1) Trade-offs between FS and other four services NPP, HQ, SC, and WC were discovered in two basins, and there were synergistic relationships between NPP, HQ, SC, and WC. (2) From 2000 to 2018, the conflicted relationships between paired ESs gradually increased, and the synergistic relationship became weaker. Furthermore, the rate of change in Guanzhong Basin was stronger than that in Hanzhong Basin. (3) The spatial synergies and trade-offs between NPP and HQ, WC and NPP, FS and HQ, SC and FS were widespread in two basins. The strong trade-offs between pair ESs were widly distributed in the central and southwest of Guanzhong Basin and the southeast of Hanzhong Basin. (4) Multiple ecosystem service interactions were concentrated in the north of Qinling Mountain, the central of Guanzhong Basins, and the east of Hanzhong Basin. Our research highlights the importance of taking spatial perspective and accounting for multiple ecosystem service interactions, and provide a reliable basis for achieving ecological sustainable development of the valley basin.