We are living through a great paradox of our own making. On a planet producing more food than at any point in its history, hundreds of millions go hungry. As we master the complexities of global supply chains, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, we find ourselves confounded by the most basic of biological conditions. For generations, we have operated under a single, compelling mantra: to feed a growing population, we must produce more food. This directive appears so self-evident, so morally urgent, that to question it seems callous. Yet, what if this foundational belief, this article of faith in our modern creed, is not just incomplete, but catastrophically backwards? What if our relentless drive to increase the global food supply is not the solution to hunger, but the primary engine of the population growth that perpetuates it?
This unsettling question finds its roots in the immutable laws of ecology that govern all life on earth. Homo sapiens sapiens, for all our cultural and technological achievements, are not exempt from these laws. We are creatures of earth, embedded in its biophysical systems. The science of population dynamics, observed in species from bacteria to mammals, demonstrates a fundamental principle: population size is a function of carrying capacity, and the most direct lever of that carrying capacity is food availability. Non-human experiments have starkly illustrated this relationship. When a population is provided with a daily food supply that is elevated and constant, it grows rapidly to the limit set by that allotment, then stops abruptly and declines. The food ceiling defines the population floor.
For the past 10,000 years, and with explosive intensity over the last two centuries, humanity has been engaged in a grand, planet-wide experiment to manipulate this single variable. The Agricultural Revolution was the first step, but the Industrial Revolution, followed by the Green Revolution, broke the ancient chains that bound human numbers to the immediate productivity of the land. Through sanitation, medicine, and fossil-fuel-powered agriculture, we systematically dismantled the natural checks -- predation, disease, famine -- that had historically regulated our population. In doing so, we created a self-reinforcing feedback loop of extraordinary power. Increased food production allowed more people to survive and propagate; that larger population, in turn, created the perceived demand for yet more food production. We have been running on a treadmill where every step forward only makes the machine run faster.
The consequence is a fundamentally flawed diagnosis of the problem of hunger. We have mistaken a distribution and population problem for a production problem. The persistent image of starvation is used to justify an ever-expanding agricultural frontier, when the reality is that we are, in effect, tossing parachutes to people who have already fallen from the airplane. If people are starving at this moment, increasing next year’s harvest cannot save them. The food arrives too late. The tragic irony is that by focusing single-mindedly on production as the cure for hunger, we ensure the continuous creation of more people vulnerable to hunger. We are, year after year, successfully feeding more people and, in the very same process, producing more hungry people. The absolute number of the malnourished grows because the base population -- driven upward by the abundant food -- continues to swell.
This fatally flawed logic is enshrined in the policies of powerful global institutions. The mantra that “food production must be increased annually to meet the needs of a growing population” is a widely shared, consensually validated mistake of major proportions. It is a statement born of political and economic expediency, not ecological reality. It inverts cause and effect. Food availability is the independent variable, the driver; population size is the dependent variable, the consequence. To believe otherwise is to subscribe to a preternatural view of humanity, one that places us outside the ecosystem we inhabit, effectively and erroneously separate from the web of life of earth of which humans are an integral part. It is a form of collective hubris that is ideologically driven and ignores the physical reality of a finite planet. We have come to see earth not as a complex, fragile biosphere with defined limitations, but as a maternal presence, as an eternally expressive teat.
The repercussions of this error extend far beyond the grim math of global hunger. The human population has exploded from one billion to eight billion in just over two centuries -- a bacterial growth curve on the graph of history. This unprecedented surge is the primary driver of every other environmental crisis we face. It is the multiplier of our impact. Our overproduction of food fuels overpopulation, which in turn fuels overconsumption of every other resource. These three forces -- overproduction, overpopulation, and overconsumption -- operate synergistically, creating a vortex of climate destabilization, biodiversity loss and ecological degradation.
The evidence is all around us. We see it in the relentless conversion of wild landscapes into mono-culture farms, leading to catastrophic biodiversity loss. We see it in the mining of aquifers for irrigation and the saturation of ecosystems with nitrogen fertilizers, creating dead zones in our oceans. We see it in the steady dissipation of finite resources and the constant generation of waste that pollutes our air, soil, and water. Most ominously, we see it in the destabilization of the global climate, a direct result of the metabolic activity of a massive, industrial-grade civilization of eight billion people and counting. The claim of human exceptionalism rings hollow in the face of these biophysical limitations. We are an exceptional species in our capabilities, but not in our population dynamics.
Acknowledging this reality is not a counsel of despair, but the first and most necessary step toward a sane and sustainable future. It requires a profound shift in perspective, from seeing humanity as separate from nature to understanding ourselves as an integral part of the web of life of earth, bound by its rules. The challenges this presents are immense, for they strike at the heart of our economic models, our political systems, and our deepest cultural narratives about progress and our place in the world.
The solutions, therefore, cannot be merely technical; they must be systemic and behavioral. First and foremost, we must break the feedback loop. This means consciously and humanely stabilizing, and then gradually reducing, global food production to a level that is sustainable for the planet, while simultaneously achieving a more equitable distribution of that food. This is the most politically incendiary but ecologically essential step. It is not about creating scarcity, but about managing abundance responsibly to avoid creating a future of far greater, involuntary scarcity. The goal is not to let people starve, but to stop proactively creating more people who are vulnerable to starvation.
This control of the food supply must be paired with a global, all-out effort to empower human beings to control their own reproduction. The provision of universal, free, safe, accessible, and voluntary contraception and sterilization services is not an alternative to addressing food supply; it is its essential partner. So, too, is the elevation of educational and economic opportunities for women and girls, which is one of the most powerful and well-documented levers for reducing birth rates. These measures are necessary and noble goals in their own right, advancing human rights and dignity. But by themselves, they will be insufficient if the powerful presence of abundant food continues to produce population growth.
The prevailing culture, however, is organized for denial. We are encouraged to focus on the declining fertility rates in many countries, a real demographic trend that nonetheless blinds us to the undeniable, ongoing annual increase in absolute global population numbers. Adding another billion people, even at a slower rate, to a planet already in overshoot is a recipe for catastrophe. The forces of the status quo --- the “masters of the universe” in corporate boardrooms and political summits --- are often the most deeply invested in the old paradigm. Their vision of the future is one of technological fixes and managed adaptation, with the assumption that their wealth will insulate them in outer space capsules, underground bunkers, or fortified islands. This is the ultimate expression of our disconnect: the fantasy that we can escape the consequences of a global ecological unraveling.
This is not a problem caused by humanity in the abstract. It is a problem driven by a specific economic and political system that prizes endless growth, concentrates power, and externalizes costs. The shibboleth of this system, “greed is good,” has brought us to the brink. We have been like children left alone in a planetary home, having ignored the "rules of the house" of our planetary home, and now here we stand amidst the wreckage, unsure whether to begin the difficult cleanup or to continue the rampage. The child perpetrators, those with the most power and responsibility for the garish wasteland, have arranged things so they believe they have no “skin in the game.” But the game is the habitability of the entire planet, and no bunker is deep enough, no island remote enough, no spacecraft high enough to escape that reality.
To change this, we must find our voice. A single voice from the wilderness is too weak to be heard by the powers that be. But a million voices, speaking as one from a foundation of scientific truth and moral courage, can shatter the walls of complacency and denial. We must demand a different path --- one that embraces “small is beautiful” over “bigger is better,” that values sufficiency over excess, and that finds prosperity in living well by living more simply and sustainably. We must pay our ecological debts instead of passing them on, and clean up the enormous messes we have made.
This is not about leaving our children a better world; that ambitious goal may now be out of reach. It is about the more urgent, fundamental task of leaving them a world that is still fit for habitation, a world with a stable climate, functioning ecosystems, and the resources necessary for them to build their own future. The choice is not between easy options. Every path forward is fraught with difficulty. But one path -- the path of continued growth and denial -- leads to a calamitous scenario. Others, the paths of acceptance, responsibility, and deliberate action, offer the chance of renewal.
The moment for silence and complacency is over. The window of opportunity for a meaningful “course correction” is closing steadily. Our generation of elders faces a responsibility unlike any before it. Our ancestors confronted grave threats, and their success in overcoming them is the reason we are here today. But our challenge is unique in its scale and global extent. We are the first generation to see the crisis of the entire earth system clearly, and we may be the last with a chance to avert its most devastating outcomes. Thus far, we have largely shirked our duties, mortgaging our children’s future for the foul fruits of power, gluttony, and effortless ease.
The science is clear. The equation is simple, even if the execution is complex. Food drives population. We have manipulated the driver to the point of breaking the system. The only way to restore balance is to consciously and humanely manage the driver itself. By doing so, not to create suffering but to prevent it, and by coupling this with a commitment to justice, birth control and human empowerment, we can step off the treadmill. We can end the paradox, not by producing our way out of it, but by understanding our way out. The time to speak out, to act, and to choose a different path is now here, before the last 'lights' we possess vanish and the door to alternative paths closes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A. is a retired practicing psychologist. In 2001 Steve founded the AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population to raise consciousness of the colossal threat that the unbridled, near exponential growth of absolute global human population numbers poses for life as it is known to us. His campaign has focused upon the best available science of human population dynamics and the topic of human overpopulation of earth in our time. He can be reached at sesalmony@aol.com.
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