Population/Resources

SS51000 (SS51@NEMOMUS.BITNET)
Mon, 10 Oct 1994 13:36:45 CST

Among the many good points made by contributors to this thread, I didn't
find anyone mentioning the vagueness of the concept of resources. We
can count people; quantifying resources is inherently problematic. I
have been doing research (some published, some in press, some in
progress) for quite some time, and have for practical purposes focused
on relationships between population, land, and food. I also have been
(re)reading Thomas Robert Malthus's *Essay* and am struck once again at
its vagueness. There are many creditable interpretations of what
Malthus was saying. On the relationship between population and food, I
have found that recent UN data suggest, surprisingly, that food
production is increasing more rapidly than population in the developing
nations, less rapidly in the developed ones. The so-called developed
world appears to be becoming food-dependent on the developing world.
Globally,we appear to be on the verge of moving from several decades in
which food production increased faster than population, to one in which
the opposite is true. Very loosely, then, we may be seeing a transition
from an "anti-Malthusian" situation to a "Malthusian" one. --Bob Graber