The Overpopulation Argument, Food Shortage and Environmental Racism

For hundreds of years the Malthusian principle has lead the way in population and sustainability studies. Created first at the turn of the 19^th century, when the world’s population was just one-twelfth of what it is today, this theory suggests that overpopulation is an inevitability in which the Earth’s food supplies will eventually not be able to support every person in the world. But this is too simplistic, because research has shown that population density is not correlated with malnourishment. More importantly, what does often cause malnourishment is capitalist, imperial expansion.

Since the 1980’s, Structural Adjustment Programs have been put into place in 90 developing countries across the world. These programs encouraged farmers to grow cash crops instead of self-sustaining food crops, in order to jump into the first world economy and theoretically through trickle-down of wealth, create better lives for everyone in the country. However, in actual practice we have seen these programs reduce food production and increase starvation in these countries, putting farmers out of business, while also putting them in debt to the World Bank and making them dependent on global food supplies. The industrial food system has been shown to employ far fewer farm workers for the same or more crop output, causing societal, economic, and environmental harm.

Today, even though the world food supply has decreased while population is increasing, overall there exists enough supply for every person to eat 2800 calories per day. Thus, even at our previously unthinkable total population count and population densities, we still have not reached the peak Malthus described. The growing capitalist structure of the world economy has encouraged overproduction, waste, and environmental degradation, specifically in third-world countries, and in our own first-world countries as well. This structure is the main cause of increasing hunger across the world, not overpopulation.

Full Article: http://www.isreview.org/issues/68/feat-overpopulation.shtml

-Brandon Alborg