I just heard on the news that the price of food is going up. That much I knew. They were saying that it will keep going up because there is no longer enough food to support the worlds population. We have finally outgrown our planet and that starting with the poorer countries we will start starving to death. Simply to many mouthes and not enough food to go around. It's already happening.

So here's the debate. In the face of such extremes should countries start making and enforcing laws limiting how many children couples can have? At what point does it become okay to do this? Should it start right away, or should a country hold off and let the population keep growing in it until that country in particular is in danger of having citizens starve? Or should nothing be done and survival of the fittest become the law of the land?

Eat less meat.
You can feed more people with a field of wheat, rather than that field going to feed a few cows to be butchered to feed fewer people than you can with grains.

Also, Ethonal fuel is taking up a feed that can be used for feeding people.

Also wars through out many different areas have completely destoryed good farm land. Work on bringing peace.

And I already believe people need to take a test in order to breed. Too many idiots around.

Originally Posted by AkashaHeartilly

Eat less meat.
You can feed more people with a field of wheat, rather than that field going to feed a few cows to be butchered to feed fewer people than you can with grains.

Also, Ethonal fuel is taking up a feed that can be used for feeding people.

Also wars through out many different areas have completely destoryed good farm land. Work on bringing peace.

And I already believe people need to take a test in order to breed. Too many idiots around.

While this may be true, even if everyone started doing it we would still get to the point where it would be either children or food again in 1 or 2 generations.

Originally Posted by Nissa

While this may be true, even if everyone started doing it we would still get to the point where it would be either children or food again in 1 or 2 generations.

How would that be soo? And really, population control is needed anyways, regardless of how soon it will be.

Also depends on the area, and with good land control and management, it would not come to that.

Honestly, I think we should just eat grass or something if it gets that bad. I know that most people are going to start stealing food if it ever get's to that point. And it's going to be real bad. Most likely we'll all have riot's and crap going on. :\

Originally Posted by AkashaHeartilly

How would that be soo? And really, population control is needed anyways, regardless of how soon it will be.

Also depends on the area, and with good land control and management, it would not come to that.

Just due to the fact that people want to have lots of children. And yes, there is only so much land. You can't farm what isn't there. People rationalize hunting with this very topic in mind. "If we don't kill them deer, they'll breed until they're to many of them and then they'll starve to death!" That's the main argument and logic behind hunting, and it's not faulty. They would starve to death without population control, as would any animal.

Personally, I believe that expansion is the reason we have these food shortages. Farmable land is constantly being taken over by people who would rather build buildings and become rich than to have food for the people in the area. Also, with the whole pollution thing, there is less and less arible land around. I believe that is the root of the problem. The way to help stop this would be to shrink the population over a few generations as so that we are able to sustain ourselves.

In my opinion, it would only be countries starting to have a shortage which should impose laws upon the number of children you can have to take down the population, kinda like China has. Hopefully that country could then sustain its own people and maybe, just maybe, some will try to make abandoned land arible.

There's too many people. That's undeniable. And we're ruining our planet. Between causing global warming and deforestation, as well as urbanization, we're running out of farming land.

We tend to manage everything badly. Humans are going to cause their own downfall. And it looks like it'll be sooner than we thought.

Listen to yourselves. You're not getting the one thing that doesn't involve population control or eating grass. We've got to find more space. Humans are adaptors. We find what we can use in the environment we live in, right? That's why different cultures have different clothing and cuisines. So if we built underwater colonies, we'd find more sources of food there. Since we can't go up anymore, why not go down? Underground communities could change everything. We actually don't know what we could do with the soil and minerals deeper into Earth, so why not? Adaptation is the thing that could save us from having to limit the amount of children. Actually, family size is a part of individuality. Take that away, and eventually we'll lose our ability to stand out. Since no one has more siblings than their friend, why stand out? Finding more space fixes everything. (except fossil fuel burning.)

Because what happens when we run out of space underwater? Outer space? There's sure as heck not any food up there.

That's really just a temporary solution. They really should propose an IQ test on your 18th birthday, and if you get a less than average score and don't have some sort of disability causing you to get said low score, you're killed off. Improbable, but not totally impossible.

I am all for child restrictions..Birth control rather then death control.
Reducing meat consumption would also help. I hate to be the kind of veg*n who forces other people to become veg*n, but there's no nice way around it, meat takes a lot of energy.

Going into space sounds great and they did find a certain moon that might support life ( forgot name now).
Right now it's not possible, so until it become possible, better not count that as one of the options.

The moon's name is Titan, btw. and yah, birth control works. but killing people because they are stupid is barbaric. and i was kind of tired when i wrote that, so if i contradict myself its okay. honestly i don't think its a hugenormous problem. just keep going up and down and out. people do die every day. eventually we'll get to zero population growth. i think if like some old person is mortally sick, then a couple should be allowed to, erm, start the baby process so it kind of evens out.

I was actually reading an article about this yesterday. And the writer had a good point. If religion would say 'Hey, ya know, in the interest of preserving the earth we've been given, we're encouraging smaller families and the use of condoms.'

Because a lot of people would listen to that. And it's kind of a necessary step to prevent executing any child after 2.

I think the real problem is the growing of corn in the United States. The corn grown by farmers is subsidized by the government, so farmers have no reason to grow anything else. about 90% of the corn is used to make high fructose corn syrup, which is very unhealthy, or ethanol, which can be refined from soy using less land, and more yield per pound of source material. If farms in the united states diversified, in one day, enough food to feed the entire country would be produced.

That along with better population controls would help level out global hunger, and reduce overpopulation. Population controls that force you to have only 1 child can be bad too though. Consider the current situation in China, where the young population consists of 70% male 30% female. Because females were less desirable, they were killed in hopes for a male child, and now over half of the male population will most likely not reproduce, a population control in itself. 2 would be a good limit, and theoretically would lead to the eventual stabilization of global population

I brought this topic up to my husband and he had a very good point. We in the US throw away enough food every day to feed another country. If we could do better with what we have then we could also make things stretch. I'm pretty good about keeping the leftover shelf clear in my house, but I bet there are people on this planet who would kill for what I do throw away.

Originally Posted by Scott

I think the real problem is the growing of corn in the United States. The corn grown by farmers is subsidized by the government, so farmers have no reason to grow anything else. about 90% of the corn is used to make high fructose corn syrup, which is very unhealthy, or ethanol, which can be refined from soy using less land, and more yield per pound of source material. If farms in the united states diversified, in one day, enough food to feed the entire country would be produced.

That along with better population controls would help level out global hunger, and reduce overpopulation. Population controls that force you to have only 1 child can be bad too though. Consider the current situation in China, where the young population consists of 70% male 30% female. Because females were less desirable, they were killed in hopes for a male child, and now over half of the male population will most likely not reproduce, a population control in itself. 2 would be a good limit, and theoretically would lead to the eventual stabilization of global population

70 percent male?. I guess they are in for society altering demographics. And they'd better like male homosexuality a lot.
I like the idea of limiting the amount of births rather then the amount of children. What happens when there are twins?... Kill one?.

I have suggested the limit of four births per couple in the USA and I get flamed and told it's wrong etc etc. People become defensive quickly about claiming the amount of children as a personal choice and right.
I thought four births per couple was plenty and most people would not want more children and if tehy did want more they could adopt after four births.

Originally Posted by Claudia

70 percent male?. I guess they are in for society altering demographics. And they'd better like male homosexuality a lot.
I like the idea of limiting the amount of births rather then the amount of children. What happens when there are twins?... Kill one?.

I have suggested the limit of four births per couple in the USA and I get flamed and told it's wrong etc etc. People become defensive quickly about claiming the amount of children as a personal choice and right.
I thought four births per couple was plenty and most people would not want more children and if tehy did want more they could adopt after four births.

I'm more for 2 births and well, I don't want children.

No, I don't believe you should kill one if it is a twin. But limiting the aount of kids is good.

I still go for a test, like you you have for driving a car, a test to see how good of a parent you are.

And the thing for china is, those women get to have the pick of the crop now.

THE HUMAN RACE IS OVERPOPULATED. PEOPLE SHOULD NOT HAVE MORE THAN TWO CHILDREN UNTIL THE HUMAN RACE LOWERS SIGNIFICANTLY AND POVERTY IS ELIMINATED AND EVERYONE WHO WANTS A JOB HAS ONE.

Originally Posted by Claudia

I am all for child restrictions..Birth control rather then death control.
Reducing meat consumption would also help. I hate to be the kind of veg*n who forces other people to become veg*n, but there's no nice way around it, meat takes a lot of energy.

Going into space sounds great and they did find a certain moon that might support life ( forgot name now).
Right now it's not possible, so until it become possible, better not count that as one of the options.

One of the most simplest things to do that many people fail to see is to simply become vegetarian or even better, vegan.

There's no way to stop global warming, but there is a way to prolong Earth's life.

Why should we worry about food? From what I heard the whole Puget Sound's seaweed could feed the whole world, and with the speed it grows, there's gotta be a pretty heavy amount easy to acquire food right on the coast.

I'm pretty sure if we combined the amount of seaweed in the world, and how much we can produce through farming, there's a pretty dang huge amount of food that's accessible.

Alright, so we as humans are totally destructive. There's no denying this, and there's probably no stopping it either.

We're probably just going to keep consuming as we do, completely squandering all of our natural resources, until we're burned out and overpopulated. Then much of the earth's population will die off and those who are left can start over.


It's bound to happen eventually anyway. We are breeding too much, and even worse, we've totally destroyed natural selection. All of the illnesses that normally keep a population in check have been cured. So eventually, we're just going to run out of space, and people will start dying. A lot of them.

Okay, don't call me any names but there should be a limit on how many children you can have. Like, 1-3 for each family. We are overpopulated. I'm not saying that we should kill of any children that were born after the first 3 already though, that would be just insane, HORRIBLE.

We should get farms and start growing food by ourselves, honestly! If each person could grow like, I don't know, 3 acres? Then we would have a lot of food. I think, I don't know. We need to start relying on ourselves, not the government. All we know is that they could be playing pinball as we type.

We're human beings, we will die some how. Hopefully, it won't be by starvation and war.

Like it or not, "survival of the fittest" still applies, and it will never stop applying. The rules have changed, so fit no longer only means able to defend oneself and reproduce, but the game still applies. Now, "fit" can mean "able to find someone nice and supportive" as well as "able to find a good job". Whether a country puts limits on reproduction or not, the battle will still rage. Some families will have more children than legal, and they will most likely suffer because of it. Either way, the human race as a whole will find a way to survive. There may be a large famine that will wipe out a large portion of the population, or humans may figure out how to colonize space first. Regardless, the battle still rages.

One side of me says yes, make with the limited amount of children per family, the world is way overpopulated. The other side of me says, what if we end up like China, with lots of old people and too few people to support all of them? Life expectancy is very high. If we could bring it down, it would be easier to implement a limit to the amount of children people can have.

This rule should also apply to other cultures, then, cultures in which it is normal to have more than six children per household. But the problem is that there's a cultural issue there: those people get children because children provide for their parents when they're elderly, so many children means a good life after retirement. I don't think it will be easy to convince those people of having a maximum of three children...

That's really hard for me to imagine, it seems that here in Canada and the USA we have a surplus of food. Look at all the obese children and adults here.

I also find it hard to imagine putting limits on child bearing as it does have consequences. First off, there would not be enough young people to support the elderly financially or otherwise.
Think of it this way... if only one third of the population of a country works and pays into a pension plan for two thirds of a country's population that's retired... well you do the math. People would starve anyway because they would not have enough to buy food. Not to mention other things like a shortage of doctors and personal support workers for the elderly. Only the really wealth elderly would be able to survive and prosper, which is unfair, it's like saying only the wealth have the right to life...which then brings up the subject of communism. Works in theory, not so much in reality. Rationing food may be an option, it might also help control the increasing problem of obesity in North America. But then again there are people out there that have special dietary needs and would need more food than let's say their neighbors which might breed jealousy and unrest in the population. You just know someone is going to step up and say "hey, I work harder than you why do you get more".

I say just let it be. It will work itself out in the end.
And yes I know that by saying that tens of thousands even millions will die from starvation. It's happening now. But we as a human race are not evolved enough as a species yet either technologically or socially or otherwise to find a quick solution to such a huge issue. There is no simple answer to this problem.