Abstract
DR. C. L. BERTHAM has presented in a minimum compass the main known facts of the relationship of population and human needs to the availability of animal and vegetable raw materials and foodstuffs (Geogr. J., 107, Nos. 5 and 6, May-June 1946). He accepts Carr-Saunders' estimates that the world's population has increased fourfold in the last three hundred years-from 545 million in 1650 to 2,057 million in 1933. Only Africa (100 million to 145 million) has failed to take part in this remarkable increase. Although probably three quarters of the world's people are farmers or their dependants, the majority of these do not get sufficient food to maintain health. Seventy-five per cent of Asia's 1,150 million people have a diet far below the standard for health : even the best-nourished countries, such as Britain and the United States, had 20-30 per cent of the people suffering from malnutritional diseases before the War. The near-famine conditions now faced by the world are nothing new, but shortages are affecting those who, by their advantageous economic position, had previously been virtually immune from even the fear of famine.
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Population Trends and the World's Resources. Nature 159, 396–397 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/159396d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/159396d0