The article lost me immediately when it started mentioning food production in Malthusian terms. It read more as a brochure for a cult than a fact based essay.
If we add 2 billion people or 30% to the world population over the next 20 years it raises some interesting questions about feeding these new 2 billion people. Especially since most of the projected population boom is coming from countries who already have problems feeding their people:
> During 2005–2050, nine countries are expected to account for half of the world's projected population increase: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, United States, Ethiopia, and China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growt...)
Because feeding people is not a production problem, it's a economic and distribution problem. We already produce enough food to feed 2 billion extra mouths, and there's no evidence to the contrary, there's issues with how climate change will affect food production, but those models are still being worked out and are on much longer timelines than 20 years.
Yes, but it makes it not a Malthusian problem. Malthus specifically stated that population would grow at a rate greater than food production, of which he was wrong. Neo-Malthusianism may take into better account the political and economic aspects of the problem, but it's an important distinction.
I doubt that Niger, which is projected to quadruple in population by 2050, will be able to scale their agriculture on their own. If they're even sustaining themselves at this point.
Countries like that are able to increase their populations faster than their food production because of trade, and their agricultural leaps are because of outside help as well.
If the entire world was averaging 7+ children per woman I could see us hitting a food ceiling pretty quick.
>If the entire world was averaging 7+ children per woman I could see us hitting a food ceiling pretty quick.
That's the thing, as it turns out there is a very high correlation between "birth rate" and "infant mortality rate", so as you reduce the infant mortality rate, the number of children per woman reduces drastically.
As for looking at food production solely with a country, it's a bit silly since we know all countries have international food trade (heck, even North Korea). The real question would be if Niger can afford to feed their population.
It's an important question whether or not these countries can grow their agriculture (which implies infrastructure and institutions as well) at an exponential rate. If they can't, then Malthus was right. If they can, Malthus was wrong.
Seeing as sub-Saharan African countries are struggling to feed the billion people they have already, no they can't handle another billion. We're talking about the poorest people on the planet here. Somehow we're so caught up in being PC that we can't tell people it's a bad idea to have so many kids for numerous reasons.
> there is a very high correlation between "birth rate" and "infant mortality rate", so as you reduce the infant mortality rate, the number of children per woman reduces drastically.
No. Correlation does not imply causation. A third factor is that infant mortality rates drop as modes of living change. It's apparently urbanization that causes people to choose to stop having so many children.
