Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
continued process putting the people on the earth in enormous problems
and economic hardship. It has been evidenced that when the world popula-
tion was 1 billion until 1830, it took only 100 years to double the number to
be 2 billion in 1930. We found that within a span of 45 years, this number
has reached to another double to make it 4 billion in 1975. There was an
addition of another two billion people by the end of the Twentieth century
to enhance world population 6 billion in 1999. Thus it has been observed
that with the passing of time in every sequence, doubling time for popula-
tion increase is becoming lesser and lesser. Such increase of population
requires more and more land for settlement and habitation having a direct
impact on natural resources. It has been calculated that overpopulation is
the prime reason for reducing per capita availability of land. To substanti-
ate this statement, the paper has incorporated an ethnographic documen-
tation of two villages from Bangladesh where it has been evidenced that
demographic pressure has resulted in the transformation of agricultural
land. Based on the data, it has been found that this loss of land in the vil-
lages Dhononjoypara was 18% and for Gopalhati, it was 19%. During my
field-visits in early 2012, the villagers reported to me that almost half of
the agricultural land in both the villages has been taken for settlement until
recently. It is thus indicative that population increase puts heavy pressure
on cropland when the people in the rural areas have been compelled to
divert their farming land for purpose of settlement and habitation.
10.7 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Rapid population growth has been identified as the single most impor-
tant factor for environmental degradation, which puts people in extreme
poverty and also deteriorates human life in many nations of the world.
It causes tremendous transformation of the world's natural landscape to
agriculture, and it has been documented clearly in our discussion that ag-
ricultural resource will soon exceed its capacity by making an irreversible
damage to the ecosystem of this planet. In my paper, I have documented
the gradual increment rate of population growth in the global context,
and also at the same time, I have provided ethnographic documentation
of the pattern of such growth at the village level. It has been argued by a
