Myth one:
OVERPOPULATION
Actually there is plenty of food in the world. Production of
cereals (wheat, rice, millet etc) last year reached 1799.2 million
tons, enough to offer everyone in the world well over the recommended
minimum of 2.500 calories per adult per day. And that is before you’ve
even begun to count the calories in vegetables, nuts, pulses, root
crops and grass-fed (as opposed to grain-fed) meat.
So what’s the problem?
The problem is the distribution of that food, both within
countries and between rich and poor worlds. People like us in the
developed nations eat much more than we need.
Americans represent only six per cent of the world’s
population, yet they consume 35 per cent of the world’s resources -
the same as the entire developing world. So is the real world
population problem that there are too many Americans?
But Western countries have enough land to support their
populations - Third World countries don’t.
Western countries have enough money to support their
populations. There’s little relationship between hunger and the
availability of land. Holland has 1.117 people per square mile and
Bolivia (just 12, yet the Dutch are one of the best-fed people in the
world and the Bolivian poor among the world’s most undernourished. We
think of India as overpopulated yet it has 568 people per square mile,
less than Britain’s 583. And Africa may have the world’s greatest food
problem - but it isn’t for the lack of land. At the moment only a
quarter of Africa’s potential arable land is being cultivated.
But doesn’t Africa have the world’s fastest population
growth?
Yes, and no one is saying they shouldn’t be concerned about
that. Contraception should be freely available to everyone who wants
it. But people are only likely to use it when their poverty is
relieved. When one in four children dies and more hands are needed to
help in the fields, children become an economic necessity. The rich
world’s population growth slowed when standards of living improved -
before the advent of reliable contraception. |