Future Population and Food Requirement
general article writing
Description
Learning Objectives:
- To quantitatively consider the issues of population, agriculture, and food to understand the scale of the societal and environmental issues
- To use crop yields and food energy density to determine amounts of food required for a growing population
Background:
Issues of agriculture have Triple Bottom Line effects with impacts in the areas of environment, society, and
economics. You are asked to consider the effects of increasing population on food production and land use.
Figure 1 shows the annual average growth rate for the world’s population over the past 50 years based on
historical census data.
From this data estimates of future populations can be made, and from population
estimates nutritional energy estimates can be made.
