Answer to Question #106263 in Microeconomics for Laurent

Question

“A point at which the world is no longer able to meet the food requirements of the population, and starvation becomes the primary check to population growth.” In other words, population will outpace food production.

Discuss whether you believe this trap has been avoided for the next 100 years. Consider government policies (like China’s one-child policy), the use of genetically engineered crops, social patterns of family size, and environmental factors

Answer 1

I believe that population will not outpace food production, because of next reasons:

- native population of rich countries declines while flows of immigrants to many of this countries are the same. Usually people migrate from poor countries, escaping poverty, lack of food or water, etc. So, those moving to richer countries have enough food and the amount of starving people will not be greater than now.

- we've already entered technological era and the pace of technology development will be growing significantly. That leads not only to new machines or space exploration, but also new food growing techniques which will allow to grow or make more food using less resources.

- the world is very polluted and our population don't only see that, but take action. A lot of food is thrown away in developed and some developing countries, while in some African countries people are starving. But due to nowadays eco-trend more and more people is considering reasonable consumption in every country. So, maybe the consumption era is ending, and the starvation level will not grow.

- policies aimed at family size(as one-child policy in China) proved to be effective in keeping the population on a curtain level, but that doesn't directly related to shutting down starvation. My point is that less population means less workers and that leads to less production(including food) and the starvation level will not be changed.

To summarize I can say, that we should not be afraid of lack of products, but instead we have to work hard on technologies and starvation reduction in poor countries.