Malthus or anti-Malthus?

[The Scoutman]

Once,an english man named Malthus said it would have too much people and we would not be able to produce enough food to feed the human race,whats your opinion about this?

Once our food production reaches a limit how we gonna feed the whole race? (pretend there is a fair distribution of resources)

Edited March 14, 2011 by Guest (see edit history)

[Alyxx Thorne]

First off, would you be so kind as to explain what Malthus and anti-Malthus is?

[The Scoutman]

First off, would you be so kind as to explain what Malthus and anti-Malthus is?

Sorry my bad XD (i guess now i mentioned the name of that man was Malthus people will realise that Malthus is who agree with him and Anti-Malthus is who disagree with him)

[beefman62]

Im Sorry i just not getting the point of this post =/

[BTGBullseye]

Im Sorry i just not getting the point of this post =/

Same...

 

Unless he's saying that by a certain date we won't have the food production capabilities to support the world's population...

[Axeldeath]

Once,an english man named Malthus said it would have too much people and we would not be able to produce enough food to feed the human race,whats your opinion about this?

Once our food production reaches a limit how we gonna feed the whole race? (pretend there is a fair distribution of resources)

 

Or we could think realistically and realise that 3rd world countries will starve while all the food stays in the developed countries

[Fujin]

Once,an english man named Malthus said it would have too much people and we would not be able to produce enough food to feed the human race,whats your opinion about this?

Once our food production reaches a limit how we gonna feed the whole race? (pretend there is a fair distribution of resources)

 

Or we could think realistically and realise that 3rd world countries will starve while all the food stays in the developed countries

 

That's life for you.

[Koach]

i think that, if food runs out, we'll find a way to eat non edible stuff. either that or cannibalism.

[Doom Shepherd]

Growing enough food is easy, distributing it is what's hard. Food tends to spoil after it sits for a while, and a lot of places are still hard to get to, especially if some of the "natives" are shooting at you.

 

Take Ethopia a few years ago. (Assuming anybody else here is old enough to remember "Live Aid" and "Do They Know It's Christmas?") Was there a natural famine? Yes.

 

But what made it much much worse was that the Communist military government of Ethopia was fighting a war with the southern tribes, and decided that the best way to win was to starve their opponents.

 

What shipments of food WERE getting to Ethiopia were being siezed and held by the government to feed their soldiers, rather than making it to the actual starving people.

 

Personally, I think we can stave off Malthus for a while longer. Assuming we wise up a bit. What we REALLY need to do is to get our various religions to stop misinterpreting the story of Onan and give up their silly resistance to contraception.

[ISGC]

Once,an english man named Malthus said it would have too much people and we would not be able to produce enough food to feed the human race,whats your opinion about this?

Once our food production reaches a limit how we gonna feed the whole race? (pretend there is a fair distribution of resources)

 

Or we could think realistically and realise that 3rd world countries will starve while all the food stays in the developed countries

this.

it's not like we all share our food as equals. If the world cannot sustain the entire human race, the third world countries will suffer while the rich countries will be fine. Like feudalism, but on a global scale.

[nomogoodnames]

A massive population drop, perhaps slowly at first, but within a month of the depletion of a large amount of food, people's extra rations will begin to decrease, the population will drop by a massive scale, large setbacks, and then the small population will bounce back if it survives at all. It's rather difficult for an animal to eat it's way into extinction by it's own hand, it's not like the bear cavalry is robbing our supermarkets. The second we lose the ability to feed ourselves, we'll hunt more animals, but eventually they will go into hiding, we will die off, small groups pull together, animals come back, food grows, we can rebuild. It's like a large cycle, we are nearing the end of the prospering age, we will dip and fall, then build back up. It happens in nature a lot, but we advanced more than technology.

[J.C.]

Malthusian. Among other things.

 

I elaborated more here

viewtopic.php?p=54548#p54548

[Instakitten]

While I know the graphs are just supposed to represent the idea that human population and our ability to sustain a given population grow at different rates, I think they are misleading.

 

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_pop_grow&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=population+growth+for+united+states#met=sp_pop_grow&tdim=true

 

The above shows that the world at large doesn't really follow anything resembling exponential growth for the human population (or at least the number of tabulated people slowed down), and you can check out the stats on individual countries in there as well, as well as juxtapose them against one another. It's neat. I'm fairly confident that less developed countries will have smaller rates of growth if/when they reach the Holy Grail, known as the Consumer State.

 

As for our ability to produce food to support our still significantly (imo) growing population, that is a bit more complicated. I think that food prices might become an issue for certain nations, and the availability of food is already an issue in certain places (Africa, mostly). Should that become "too much" (whatever the hell that means) of an issue, I think the solution would be to cut down on livestock farming. Livestock farming consumes a rather large amount of all crops produced, and the returns for cutting down on even a relatively small percent of commercial meats would translate into cheaper crops, as well as more of it. I'm not a vegetarian, nor do I feel a lot of compassion for animals, but farming fewer of them would be beneficial in certain circumstances.

[Blue]

A common occurrence is people valuing economies more than food.

Watch this fascinating infographic

[wakefield26]

Aren't we already a bit on the Malthus side of the scale?

 

Though I suppose it is more of a food distribution imbalance than a total worldwide lack of food, Richer countries can afford to import more food for their larger population, while impoverished countries don't have enough resources or farmable land to support the entire population.

[Vapymid]

while impoverished countries don't have enough resources or farmable land to support the entire population

 

I tend to disagree with this. If you look at most of the impoverished countries you will find they have plenty of farmable/arable land. Their lack of food is normally explained by antiquated agricultural methods, backward social structure and ethnic/civil conflicts.

 

The Earth population will need to grow to some kind of Coruscantian size before the planet itself will run out of resources to generate enough food (and will have to start importing it from Mars ).

 

Regards

[Razor235]

Two words: Soylent Green.

[Ross Scott]

I think right now we're way into Malthus territory, it just hasn't caught up with us yet. There's a strong correlation between the first oil well drilling and when global population began to start increasing exponentially. I've heard estimates that without oil, globally we can only support about 1 billion people. I think with modern technology and agricultural knowledge we could get more out of that, maybe 2-3 billion. Also oil won't disappear overnight, but once global production starts declining, I think it's going to become more and more difficult to feed even the 7 billion we already have. Modern farming depends heavily on oil both for cultivating and distribution. The higher the cost of that gets, the less farmers can produce and the more local their distribution will be. This is highly speculative, but if predictions about oil production declining in 2015 (hopefully not as early as 2013), then I think you could start seeing an actual reversal in population growth by maybe 2025.

[Razor235]

Until, of course, either fuel-cells or solar panels become economical.

[Vapymid]

One limiting process Malthus did not consider was the economic restraint on birth rate which becomes a factor in "developed" economies.

 

The higher the standard of living gets, the more relatively expensive it becomes for parents to bring up a child. We can see it working clearly now as the problem of the developed nations is the *low" birth rate of the native population.

 

It is logical to assume that this will hold true for developing countries as well and their population growth will start leveling off once a certain economic magnitude is achieved.

 

Ultimately, the overall population will continue to grow but at a slower rate as long as enough energy can be generated and material resources found on Earth. Those will be the "hard" limits and they can only be overcome by exploring extraterrestrial resources.

 

Of course, there may always be extreme tail events - external (a GRB nearby) or internal (some monumental screw up) but these are not part of the "natural" trend...

 

Regards