Re: mono-crop impacts on overpopulation

[Guest guest]

Does corporate mono-crop agriculture agriculture contribute to

overpopulation? The author of The Oil We Eat (feb. Harper's) said it does

but didn't explain. I'm trying to understand overpopulation better and why

it is a problem in poorer countries.

Elaine

[Guest guest]

>Does corporate mono-crop agriculture agriculture contribute to

>overpopulation? The author of The Oil We Eat (feb. Harper's) said it does

>but didn't explain. I'm trying to understand overpopulation better and why

>it is a problem in poorer countries.

>Elaine

Actually mono-crop agriculture and lack of fertility probably

contributes to infertility more than the opposite. In our

current state of lack of nutrition, infertility is higher than

ever.

However, families started growing in size as soon as humans stopped

being nomadic ... having more calories and not having to

carry babies from camp to camp, plus having more babies

meant more bodies to work on the farm. In developing countries,

one thing that has led to more population growth has been

taking what were hunter-gatherer populations and moving them

to cities, and outlawing the things that acted as population

controls earlier (like warring on the neighboring village and

homicide and infanticide) as well as cheap carbs and using formula instead

of nursing for long periods.

My take is that overpopulation is more of problem when women don't

have access to cheap birth control, or are not allowed to

use it(or strongly discouraged from using it, or are encouraged

to have big families for cultural or religious reasons).

Thailand made great progress with slowing population growth

just using education and easy access to birth control.

Plus when familes feel more secure, they tend to have

fewer children (if you are pretty sure all your kids will

survive, you don't need so many to start with ... in my Grandad's

day, out of 11 kids maybe 4 survived to adulthood).

-- Heidi Jean