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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GPS Info who wrote (184931)	4/10/2006 11:53:06 PM
From: neolib	Respond to of 281500

For African regions that experience frequent droughts, overpopulation means undernourished and malnourished people who then become ever more desperate. As the population increases, the farm sizes decrease because they are split up between sons. This makes these smaller and smaller farms less and less viable. My inlaws in Kenya tell me that the average "farm" size where they are has dropped below 1 acre for the current generation. Not sufficient to really support a family, although it is in the wetter part of Kenya. Overall, population growth in Kenya is out pacing food production growth, so, it looks to me like they are screwed, although AIDS will contribute what it can to the situation. Not sure if Kenya is heading for negative pop growth like projected for some of southern Africa. The one silver lining to the picture is that ag yields are very poor in Africa, so better practices could potentially radically up food production, although likely at considerable environmental stress, since much of the current practices don't use much chemical input, and also don't suck as much water out of the system as western practices routinely do.

To: GPS Info who wrote (184931)	4/11/2006 12:30:12 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

"I don't agree. that we need to rein-in population growth. " My concern is more with the flora and fauna we drive to extinction. Each one, a miracle we can't reproduce. I'm sure we can cram many more humans on the globe, but do we really want to? Is that the future we want for ourselves? In our lifetimes we may see the end of wild elephants and big cats, to name a couple of popular species.

To: GPS Info who wrote (184931)	4/11/2006 5:00:04 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

What this says is that there is a food shortage: <For African regions that experience frequent droughts, overpopulation means undernourished and malnourished people who then become ever more desperate. As the population increases, the farm sizes decrease because they are split up between sons. This makes these smaller and smaller farms less and less viable.> If food supplies were doubled, things would be hunky dory in Africa. Their problem is that they have been unable to do that. Mugabe has done the reverse and reduced food production. The problem is political rather than too many people. It's not overpopulation, it's under-nutrition. Total human happiness would be increased if both food quantity [in the right place] and quality were improved. There's no need for a population cut, which would reduce total human happiness. Our 9 month old grandson has definitely increased total human happiness. Having him not born would have meant less. I'm sure babies born in Africa [where there isn't starvation] increases total human happiness too, at least in the short term, [or they wouldn't be so keen on producing them]. Mqurice