Review of Reading 15: Feeding the World

After reading Feeding the World I was shocked to find out that the Earth's population surpassed 6 billion people in 1999!! So that could even be more now! Just think of how many mouths that is to feed in a year with 3 meals a day...that got my head spinning. Which brought up a good point with there not being enough space for food supply. Because you have to factor in the space needed for all the people to live and space for stores to buy the food and make it and so and so...you get the picture, not enough room for everything to fit. The reading covers: Society's Four Transitional Stages, Evidence for Negative Population Growth, Future Food Supply/Demand Balance, Protecting the Environment, and The Challenges Ahead.

Society's Four Transitional Stages:

This section discusses the four transitions of societies based on demographics, economics, agricultural productivity, and technological advancements. The first stage is the traditional society, which has low population density and low economic and population growth. The second stage is the developing stage, this is where agricultural production and plat and animal domestication are an outcome of a society's technological advancements. The third stage is a developed society, which is where the economic surplus and increases in capital and per capita income begin as a outcome of increases in agricultural production and productivity. The fourth stage is the mature society, which is the prominent technological change beyond just agriculture. Each stage talked about how society is moving up toward higher food production and technological output, lower death rates, and investments in education and science.

Evidence for Negative Population Growth:

This section discusses the stats that deals with various population projections around that world. The United Nations' medium population projection of 2.1 children after 2040 is widely used as a demographic forecast, but it unrealistically assumes that this rate will be the same in both developed and developing countries (McKinney, 56). I thought that it was already at that average these days to have 2 children.

Future Food Supply/Demand Balance:

This section discusses the future demand for food will pass our food supply. It is kind of hard to think of happening since we have all these food places around us. Right off hand I can think of 10 places to go and eat and all in like walking distance from my own house and that is not including grocery stores! Being an American we are really lucky that we have all these advantages to get our food now. What would we do with out our McDonald's...and other fast food places??

Protecting the Environment:

This section discusses the benfits of being more green and what to do to take care of our world. It really went into talking about on how the more people there are the more land we need to clear which means less natural habitats. Which all makes perfect sense but what are we as Americans doing to help with this problem?

The Challenges Ahead:

This section just recaps the whole reading stating that if we want our resources to still be there we need to do something about our population control and how we use/dispose of our products. It is really sad that we are this technological advance country and we still don't use our resources wisely.

My Views:

I think that us as Americans have relied on other countries and other people too much. We need to start looking at what we have here in the US and focus a little bit more on the problems that are happening here. We put so much of our resources into out of country things we lose site of what we have here. If we can figure out on how to help our selves we can then go about helping others as well.

Terms:

Demographics= selected population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research

Agricultural Productivity= is measured as the ratio of agricultural outputs to agricultural inputs

Economics= is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services

Developed Countries= is used to  describe countries that have a high level of development according to some criteria

Developing Countries= is a country that has low standards of democratic governments, industrialization, social programs, and human rights guarantees for its citizens

Population Growth= is the change in population over time, and can be quantified as the change in the number of individuals in a population using "per unit time" for measurement

Technical Advancements= is a broad concept that deals with an animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects an animal species' ability to control and adapt to its environment

Additional Resource:

After reading the article I went to where this was originally published to see if they had anything more say about the topic and I found an article that caught my eye and thought that you should maybe check it out... The Futurist

"It's not easy to be Green."-Kermit