Thanks to Dan Sherr for this article.
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Birthrates Help Keep Filipinos in Poverty, Contraceptives, Rejected by Government, Are Unaffordable for Many in Majority-Catholic Nation

Maria Susana Espinoza wanted only two children. But it was not until after the birth of her fourth child in six years that she learned any details about birth control.

“I knew it existed, but I didn’t know how it works,” said Espinoza, who lives with her husband and children in a squatter’s hut in a vast, stinking garbage dump by Manila Bay.

For full article, visit:
http://www.washingtonpost.com

CARE is holding a conference in Washington, DC and is hoping to build their Vermont constituency working on advocacy issues at a state level. Here is their announcement.

Join CARE in Washington DC on June 18 and 19, 2008 for the CARE National Conference. Meet with your members of Congress to discuss policies that can help break the cycle of poverty. This year’s event will be very exciting!

Read the rest of this entry »

The connection between Malthus and India are twofold. For one, the country provided the fitting final stage to re-enact his theory on divergent growth pattern between population and foodgrain production even as late as the 1960s, when India was plagued by booming population growth and a diffident growth in food production.

However, there was a more tenuous connection between the economist and Indian economic history. Malthus was the first professional economist by training to teach at the college founded at Haileybury in England by the East India Company to train its young administrators on the rudiments of economic theory.

For Full article, visit:
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com

Thanks to Steve Kurtz for this article.
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For a 13-year-old boy in this impoverished, teeming city, some things are more important than classes — rice, for one.

“I need to eat first, then school,” said Mohammad Hasan, standing at the back of a line of hundreds of people waiting to pick up government-subsidized rice.

With the price of food skyrocketing around the world, desperately poor and overpopulated Bangladesh is considered one of the world’s most vulnerable nations.

For full article, visit:
http://www.newsvine.com

Mr Ban said the trend would hinder progress towards the millennium development goals (MDGs), which aim to halve extreme poverty by 2015.

The UN World Food Program (WFP) and other agencies may be forced to ration food aid, he said in a BBC interview.

He said shortages might be eased by a “green revolution” to transform farming methods in Africa.

For full article, visit:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/in_depth/7288959.stm

Thanks to Joe Bish for sending me this editorial below, from the New York Times. It acknowledges the role of population growth in aggravating the increase in food prices caused by biofuel policies.

Priced Out of the Market
The world’s food situation is bleak, and shortsighted policies in the United States and other wealthy countries — which are diverting crops to environmentally dubious biofuels — bear much of the blame.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the price of wheat is more than 80 percent higher than a year ago, and corn prices are up by a quarter. Global cereal stocks have fallen to their lowest level since 1982.

For full article, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com

Thanks to Fred Stanback for the editorial that follows by Lester Brown and Jonathan Lewis from the Washington Post, dated April 22.

Ethanol’s Failed Promise
The willingness to try, fail and try again is the essence of scientific progress. The same sometimes holds true for public policy. It is in this spirit that today, Earth Day, we call upon Congress to revisit recently enacted federal mandates requiring the diversion of foodstuffs for production of biofuels. These “food-to-fuel” mandates were meant to move America toward energy independence and mitigate global climate change. But the evidence irrefutably demonstrates that this policy is not delivering on either goal. In fact, it is causing environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis.

For full article, visit:
http://www.washingtonpost.com

Thanks to James Sinnamon for sending me this link to a lecture on population and food supply:

http://www.panearth.org

Whatever Dennis Miller decides to plant this year on his 2,760-acre farm, the world needs. Wheat prices have doubled in the last six months. Corn is on a tear. Barley, sunflower seeds, canola and soybeans are all up sharply.

“For once, there’s great reason to be optimistic,” Mr. Miller said.

But the prices that have renewed Mr. Miller’s faith in farming are causing pain far and wide. A tailor in Lagos, Nigeria, named Abel Ojuku said recently that he had been forced to cut back on the bread he and his family love.

For full article, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com

Thanks to Peter Salonius for the following two articles.
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A growing number of media commentators, such as Allen Greer in The Australian, John Gray in the Guardian’s Observer and Alan Weisman in his book ‘The World Without Us’, have begun to suggest that a world with fewer people would be far better placed to deal with climate change and the exhaustion of the dirty fuels of the industrial past. Many of them appear to think that high technologies such as nuclear energy and Genetically Modified crops in combination with curbs on population would begin dampen the environmental disruption that is becoming increasingly obvious.

For full article, visit: http://www.relocalize.net/population_and_intensive_crop_culture_are_unsustainable

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Population Growth in the U S and Canada: A Role for Scientists (PDF, 139 KB)

Thanks to Carter Dillard for this article.
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Riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring
costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and
catapulted it to the forefront of the world’s attention, the head of
an agency focused on global development said Monday.

“This is the world’s big story,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of
Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

For full article, visit:
http://www.cnn.com