(8 of 8)
A country is overpopulated when its people cannot get enough food. This is seldom because they have too little land. Usually it is because their social organization and farming methods are ineffective. India is a hungry country, but it is not permanently overpopulated. It has much potentially good land whose present yields are pathetically low. India averages only ten bushels of wheat an acre while Denmark gets 50. India's rice yield is only 750 Ibs. an acre, one-quarter as good as Japan's. A little fertilizer and some simple improvements in agricultural technique would make a huge difference to India's food supply. If Indians liked corn and produced 136.24 bushels an acre, like
Farmer Simpson of North Carolina, they could fill their thin bellies to bursting and have enough left over for all the Hindus' sacred cows.
China's Hillsides. Even the Chinese, who are among the best farmers in the world, do not use their land to full advantage. Chinese farmers make the most of the plains and valley bottoms, but only in a few parts of the country do they farm the hillsides. These grow grass and brush, which are desperately needed for fuel. If the Chinese could mine and distribute their coal, they could turn the hillsides into productive pastures and orchards. This single item, according to one estimate, would add 10% to China's food supply.
The wide spread between present food production and potential production, even in China and India, is vitally significant (and hopeful). Both great nations, in spite of civil disturbances, are beginning to industrialize. When their populations rise, following the classic curve, they can probably raise enough food to keep their people supplied until the curve begins to flatten out normally.
The conclusion is that world starvation is not around the corner. Man can make a mess of his food supply, as he can of anything else. He does not have to, however. The land is there, the hands to work it are there, the brains are there. If he uses his head he can eat hearty—indefinitely. He might even produce enough to help out Dr. Vogt's friends, the woodland caribou, the Florida manatee, the wolverine and the bighorn sheep. Unfortunately nothing can be done for the extinct Eskimo curlew.
*Chinese population has probably not increased at all during the last decade of disruption.
*Russian for "black soil." The Russians, pioneer soil scientists, named many soil types.
† Russian for "under the ashes," as when a forest is cleared by burning.
*The Neo-Malthusians are not the only ones who have been wildly wrong about population growth. Abraham Lincoln, assuming that U.S. population would continue to grow as fast as it did in his day, predicted that the U.S. would have 250 million people by 1930. According to his forecasts, the 1948 population would be 430 million instead of 140 million.