ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on three aspects of the match of food to population. First, on the nature of the demand for food; second, on the course of population growth as a component of global demand; and third, on the prospects for augmenting food production to meet world demand. In an era when the credibility of all forecasters has been deservedly lost, the willingness of people to quote population projections with abandon is quite amazing. A superficial reading of global population data suggests that human fertility declines as economic growth and personal well-being increase. The delegates from the industrial countries argued the importance of population control policies and programs in the developing nations and pledged assistance for the efforts of low-income societies to attack directly their rapidly growing numbers by means that would slow this growth. The issue of food for people born and yet to be born is only a minor technical problem.