Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
International Data Base also projected and mentioned that this number will
be 9 billion in the year 2044, an increase of 50% within a span of 45 years
(US Census Bureau, 2010). Accordingly, the demographers and environ-
mentalists have posed a concern; the main challenge for the global environ-
ment is to determine our planet's capacity to sustain such a huge number of
growing populations. In this context, the carrying capacity (Note 1) of the
planet may further be measured by calculating the per capita requirement
of food and nutrition subsistence. To provide adequate food subsistence to
the people living with diverse diet will require at least 0.5 hectare of arable
land per person (Lal & Steward, 1990), and at this time, we have only 0.27
hectare per capita land available to us, which will drastically be reduced to
0.14 hectare per person within the next 40 years due to loss of land caused
by population pressure (Pimentel, 1993; Pimentel et al., 1994; Pimentel et
al., 1995; Pimentel, 1997). In his book titled 'World Soil Erosion and Con-
servation' published in the year 1993, David Pimentel mentioned that per
capita shortage in the availability of land has remained the major reason
for severe food shortage and malnutrition in many parts of the world. The
environmental depression is further intensified due to soil erosion in agricul-
tural areas where 75 billion of metric tons of soil are demolished from the
fi elds through wind and water, mostly affecting the cultivatable land (Myers,
1993). Furthermore, it is documented that deforestation and desertifi cation
have been occurring in the last two decades causing the human beings to be
more vulnerable to shortages of land (Skole & Tucker, 1997). In the process
of deforestation and desertifi cation, more forest areas are converted for re-
quired farming activities (Note 2).
Based on the foregoing contextual introduction, the main purpose of this
paper is to assess specifi cally the impact of growing population on avail-
able agricultural resources around the world which creates pressure on in-
digenous and sustainable agricultural management. Purposively therefore,
the paper has four-fold collectives to relate demography with the available
natural resources. At the initial point, the paper provides an outline of quan-
titative documentation showing a linear increase of the world's population
in recent times. While the population grows at an unexpectedly speedy geo-
metrical confi guration as theoretized by Thomas Robert Malthus (1798), it
is quite certain that this huge number of population will require food, wa-
ter, and settlement which will force the world to place unexpected pressure
