Title: Full house : reassessing the earth's population carrying capacity /
Authors: Brown, Lester R. 1934-; Kane, Hal.; Worldwatch Institute.
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.,
Year: 1994
Subjects: Overpopulation; Pollution Economic aspects; Food supply; Poverty; Human ecology; Birth control.; Food Supply; Poverty; Ecology; Contraception
Abstract: "After decades of steady growth, the world's food supply is no longer keeping up with population increases. These are the findings in this fourth volume in the Worldwatch Environmental Alert series from the Worldwatch Institute." According to Lester Brown and Hal Kane, the world's farmers can no longer be counted on to feed adequately the projected additions to our numbers. Achieving a humane balance between food and people now depends more on family planners than on farmers. "In this volume, the authors propose a global strategy to restore food security and a budget to implement it. Their global food security budget calls for stepped-up expenditures on both sides of the food/population equation. It includes investments not only to provide family planning services to all who want them, but also to eliminate the underlying causes of high fertility, such as female illiteracy. It also includes investments in an extensive reforestation and soil conservation effort, one that will arrest the deterioration of the agricultural resource base."--Jacket.
Contents: Entering a new era -- Food insecurity -- Ninety million more -- Climbing the food chain -- Overharvesting the oceans -- Overgrazing rangelands -- Limits of the plow -- Spreading water scarcity -- The fertilizer falloff -- Struggling to raise yields -- Environmental deductions -- Carrying capacity: the big four -- Carrying capacity: the next nine -- The growing imbalance -- Reassessing population policy -- Turning the tide.