Impact Of Rapid Population Growth

Impact Of Rapid Population Growth

Introduction
As the world population continues to grow geometrically, great pressure is being placed on arable land, water, energy, and biological resources to provide an adequate supply of food while maintaining the integrity of our ecosystem. According to the World Bank and the United Nations, from 1 to 2 billion humans are now malnourished, indicating a combination of insufficient food, low incomes, and inadequate distribution of food. This is the largest number of hungry humans ever recorded in history. In China about 80 million are now malnourished and hungry. Based on current rates of increase, the world population is projected to double from roughly 6 billion to more than 12 billion in less than 50 years (Pimentel et al., 1994). As the world population expands, the food problem will become increasingly severe, conceivably with the numbers of malnourished reaching 3 billion.
Impact of rapid population growth on agriculture development
Based on their evaluations of available natural resources, scientists of the Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences have issued a joint statement reinforcing the concern about the growing imbalance between the world's population and the resources that support human lives (RS and NAS, 1992).
Reports from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, numerous other international organizations, and scientific research also confirm the existence of this serious food problem caused by the rapid population growth. For example, the per capita availability of world grains, which make up 80 per cent of the world's food, has been declining for the past 15 years (Kendall and Pimentel, 1994). Certainly with a quarter million people being added to the world population each day, the need for grains and all other food will reach unprecedented levels.
More than 99 per cent of the world's food supply comes from the land, while less than 1 per cent is from oceans and other aquatic habitats (Pimentel et...