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  • Title: Land and people, the growing pressure.
    Author: Harrison P.
    Journal: Earthwatch; 1983; (13):1-8. PubMed ID: 12312085.
    Abstract:
    The findings of a new study of land resources and population supporting capacity in 117 contries, conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reveal that at subsistence levels of farming, the entire cultivable lands of the developing world--3 or 4 times the present cultivated area--would barely be able to support the expected population for the year 2000. 65 countries would be unable to feed their population from their own lands at the end of the century. The study methodology was very complex. The detailed FAO/Unesco World Soil Map (scale 1:5,000,000) provided localized data on soil types, the slope of the land, and other physical characteristics that affect productivity. A separate climate map was prepared, based on patterns of rainfall, temperature, and solar radiation, which divided the developing world into major climates and into many hundreds of "length of growing period zones"--areas within which conditions were suitable for plant growth for a given number of days in the year. The critical step was to superimpose the climate map over the soil map, thus providing a fine mosaic of tens of thousands of land units with distinctive land and climate characteristics. For each cell in this mosaic, a complicated computer program calculated the potential yields for every 1 of the major food crops that could be grown there. The findings of this study present an unanswerable challenge to those who hold that there are no limits to food production except those deriving from social and economic structures and there is no such thing as overpopulation. On a global scale, the results look misleadingly reassuring. Even at low farming levels, the lands of the developing countries studied could support 1-1/2 times their expected populations for the year 2000. The closer the results come to national and local levels, the more alarming they become. The regional picture is cause for concern in Africa, which wit h low inputs could support only 1-1/2 times its year 2000 populations; in Central America and the Caribbean, which could support 1.4 times the expected numbers; and in Asia 1.1 times. Only Southwest Asia (the Middle East) would be unable to feed its population at the end of the century, even with intermediate inputs, but with high inputs could just about manage. In the other regions, raising the level of inputs allows much higher population supporting capacities. What the maps show is reviewed in detail for Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Southwest Asia.
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