Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
until that time. The overall statistics on world population exhibit that it
remained at 1 billion until 1830, and it took 100 years to double the popu-
lation to 2 billion in the year 1930. But subsequently, within a range of
30 years later in 1960, the cumulative growth of population stood at 3
billion worldwide. It took only another 15 years in 1975 to increase the
total population of the world to 4 billion. To explain more analytically, the
causative factor for a lower number of population growth prior to 1930
was not for its lower birth, but because of the high rate of mortality due to
some severe and uncontrollable epidemics which caused a huge number
of world population to perish at that time. The mortality rate in those days
further increased due to conditions like famines, accidents, etc., which
reduced human population even though there was high fertility. It is clear
from the above statistics that within a stipulated period of only 45 years
from 1930 to 1975 the population of the world had simply doubled. In
this continuous process, twelve years later in 1987, the population of the
world reached 5 billion. In the year 1999, it became 6 billion which further
increased to 6.8 billion in the year 2009 (Population Reference Bureau,
2009). World population is expected to grow to 8.9 billion in 2050, and
much of the demographic change up to this period will occur in the less
developed nations. Although at present the population growth rate is 76
million a year, it does not seem to be appreciating much.
Although the overall population growth rate throughout the world had
decreased considerably during the later part of the last century, the pop-
ulation growth rate in general remained consistently high in many poor
and underdeveloped countries. During 1960, the population growth rate
throughout the world peaked at 2.4% per year which was later reduced to
1.8% during 1999 meaning there is an increase of 87 million people every
year. Extrapolating on such trend of lower fertility rate, UNDP's projected
data clearly indicate that the world population will reach 9.1 billion by
2050 (Wright, 2008; UNDP, 2009). Rising population has already been a
problem for many poor and developing nations of the world. For instance,
the population in India which is approximately 1.8 billion inhabits an area
of 3,287,240 sq. km. Its current growth rate is 1.9% per year which will
double in the next 37 years (PRB, 1995; as quoted in Pimentel, 1998).
Similarly, China has 1.27 billion people with a growth rate of 1.1% which
is the optimum desirable rate of the percent size (Qu & Li, 1992). Despite
