We can stop working for or purchasing from those types of business that encourage growth, and we can stop placing a demand on products that encourage resource degradation both here and abroad which, again, contributes directly to population growth. If we can create a model for doing just those three things alone locally, we can present that model for all the other regions of the world to adapt. All the more reason why the most affluent countries like the United States need to clean up their own houses, locally. Population and consumption go hand and hand in contributing to resource degradation. Land degradation is caused by those same economic pressures that spur population growth.
Agribusiness is just one part of that mold.
At the same time it depletes and salinates topsoil and pollutes water sources with fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, it displaces people from the farms and draws them into the city or suburb, where their impact on the environment is far greater than if there was a balance of people living in rural communities to act as stewards of the land. The greatest threat to rural land, however, according to the American Farmland Trust, is new development to accommodate population growth. Many people have the misunderstanding that as long as new development is dense, farms will be protected. But more new development continues to follow old new development, ad infinitum. Western European countries have pretty much stabilized their populations, largely due to a secure social economic system.