What Drives Population — Food or Energy?
A common assumption among population analysts is that food availability is the main driver of population growth. In fact, most will go so far as to define the carrying capacity of an environment primarily in terms of the food that it offers to the population under consideration. I have two major problems with this approach to population and carrying capacity, as outlined below. My first objection is that this approach treats carrying capacity as a variable, and the expansion of agriculture as an increase in carrying capacity. This requires a definition of carrying capacity I do not subscribe to. The definition I am most comfortable with is, “The population level that an environment can support over the long term without damaging the ecology of the environment”. An expansion of agriculture does not meet this definition because putting new land under the plow or increasing the production of existing farmland affects habitat, biodiversity, water levels and soil fertility among many enviro
