Ponting 12 - The Weight of Numbers

• Europe – period of dramatic growth in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries… followed by a period of much slower growth
o period of rapid growth in population after the mid-eighteenth century largely the result of a decline in mortality levels
o subsequent slackening in growth was result of a fall in birth rates, altering a pattern that had been established for hundreds of generations

• Asia and Africa – story has same start but different ending: period that has seen the highest rates of growth = the twentieth century

• in the Third World – 20th century growth rates on average over 2% a year (far higher than in 19th century Europe)
o fertility higher due to young age and high rate of marriage

• Americas and Oceania – more complex… result of a different series of developments
o sharp rise due to immigration from Europe (especially in 19th century) then by natural increase

• unprecedented rise in human numbers – profound consequences for environment
o increase in number and size of human settlements
o more resources consumed… pollution increased

• until about 1800, traditional limits on food supply set by amount of suitable land available, level of agricultural productivity, amount of trade, social and political factors, and climate

• agriculture of the industrialized world was transformed by increases in productivity

• period after 1850: mechanization of agriculture and the adoption of high input farming

• during 20th century – animal rearing systems more intensive (rather than traditional methods of raising domesticated animals)

• much of large increase in agricultural output in the industrialized world in the last 50 years has come about as a consequence of government intervention

• Third World countries: increasing amounts of land devoted to growing cash crops for export (due to European political control), cultivation more intensive

• “Green Revolution” – ‘solution to the problem of growing enough food to support the expanding population of the Third World’
o not the solution. (has since become apparent)
o combined effect of the extension of the cultivated area and use of more artificial inputs was to increase food production
o gains have been unevenly spread and inadequate to cope with a rapidly increasing population… worst affected area = Africa

• all these changes in food production, trade, and population growth  created an unbalanced world agricultural system

• estimated that a quarter of all the food produced in the United States goes to waste at some point in the production, distribution, and consumption chain

• about half the world’s population are undernourished

• massive loss of natural ecosystems in last two centuries because… huge increase in the amount of land under cultivation, the extension of pasture land into new areas, and the intensification of agriculture

• much of the destruction concentrated on the easiest way of obtaining new agricultural land – clearing the natural forests

• scale of forest destruction has been growing since the Second World War as population in the Third World has risen sharply and the demand for more land has similarly increased

• destruction of tropical forests only offers a short-term solution to the problem of finding more land for agriculture… can alter climate

• in every part of the world, modern agriculture has led to severe soil erosion in the wake of deforestation, ploughing up of grasslands, and the cultivation of steep slopes

• intensification of food production has led to a vast increase in the amount of irrigated land in the world

• Agriculture has always meant disrupting natural ecosystems, but the growing weight of numbers has in many areas turned it into a positively destructive force, threatening ever more marginal and delicate ecosystems with increasingly damaging environmental effects.