Abstract
The world food scene is dominated by four powerful forces: the population growth, the accelerating affluence in the industrialized countries, the rapidly increasing armies of the destitute in the developing countries, and the unrestraint urban growth. The lack of historical and biological perspectives has led to two basic fallacies in the evaluation of the world food problems. Historically Europeans were able to temporarily resolve their food and population problems through emigration. In biological terms all people living now could get an adequate diet if feed crops were not substituted for food crops. It is shown that such metaphors as triage, lifeboat operations and the abuse of the commons are misleading and that they distract from the real nature and magnitude of the world food crisis.
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References
Most data are computed by the author on the basis of data available in the FAO Production and Trade Yearbooks. For further references see:
Borgstrom, G. (1964). The Human Biosphere and its Biological and Chemical Limitations. Pp. 130–165 in Global Impacts of Applied Microbiology (Ed. M.P. Starr). Almquist & Wiksell, Stockholm, and John Wiley, New York, NY, 572 pp.
Borgstrom, G. (1971). Too many -- An Ecological Overview of Earth’s Limitations. Macmillan, New York, NY, xiii + 360 pp
Borgstrom, G. (1973). Focal Points -- A Food Strategy for the Seventies. Macmillan, New York, NY, xii + 320 pp.
Borgstrom, G. (1973). The Food-People Dilemma. Intext Publishers, North Scituate, Massachusetts, vii + 140 pp.
Borgstrom, G. (1979). Agriculture and World Feeding Alternatives, 323–380. In Growth without Ecodisasters? (Ed. N. Polunin, Macmillan, London, England, 580 pp.
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© 1981 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Borgstrom, G. (1981). Population Growth, Nutrition and Food Supply. In: Bach, W., Pankrath, J., Schneider, S.H. (eds) Food-Climate Interactions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8563-6_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8563-6_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-277-1354-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-8563-6
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