The shadow of the world's future, or The earth's population possibilities & the consequences of the present rate of increase of the earth's inhabitants

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1775636852

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-164018

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Knibbs, George Handley http://d-nb.info/gnd/1045010944

Title:: The shadow of the world's future, or The earth's population possibilities & the consequences of the present rate of increase of the earth's inhabitants

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Ernest Benn Limited

Year of publication:: (1928)

Scope:: 131 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter IV. The world's cereal and food-corps and its mineral needs

Collection:: Economics Books

THE WORLD’S CEREAL AND FOOD-CROPS 43 become more largely agricultural, the need. for -new sources of potassium or even for phosphorus cmajy diminish, since they are not lost but are largely returned. to the soil. Co 3 The facts we have just reviewed indicate} however, that there are after all very real limits to the possibilities of agriculture and to the population that is-dependent upon it. The somewhat popular notion that ‘h"ine tensive system of agriculture can be almost illimitably developed, so as to meet all possible difficulties that can arise in respect of food-supplies, is invalid: it is without basis. Indeed to obtain fertilisers economic- ally in sufficient quantity to meet the needs of even a small multiple of the existing 1950 millions of popula- tion will be very difficult, and will involve the use of more expensive methods than those characteristic of the present time. There is, too, a prevailing popular notion that, in some way or other, the developments of science will be such as to meet any difficulty of this kind. It has even been thought that the question of food-supplies can be met in perpetuity, and under all circumstances. This notion has, however, no valid foundation whatsoever. It is one of those surmises for which there is no warrant from any reasonable point of view. It is of course true that, with every accession of scientific and technical knowledge, a possibility of the earth carrying a larger population collaterally arises. The science and inven- tion of the last one hundred years, as already said, have actually enormously increased human population by increasing the food-supply, by making life-conditions better, and by reducing human mortality. But it is inevitable that the rate of such advances will slow down and ultimately that they will cease, in fact in a much shorter time than is popularly believed. Even as far back as the time of Quetelet (1796-1874), a contem- porary, Verhulst, submitted a theory that a territory >

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