Food And Population Growth

William C. Thiesenhusen

Economics and Finance in Indonesia, 1974, vol. 22, 209-224

Abstract: I take it as an absolute necessity that population growth mustbe controlled. I simply do not see how any of the countries I know can double in population and still feed its poeple at any acceptible level by the year 2000, which is an implication of a 2.5% rate population growth. My conclusion is that changes in farm technology leading to more production are necessary. But if we concentrate only on production we may exacerbate the income gaps that separate rich and the poor. Whether we do or not depends on institutions through which we channel new inputs to reach a target; the farmer who is to use it. Just what kind of farmer it reaches is important to me : if it gets to the small-scale farmer, if the migrant laborer benefits, it employment in a rural area is enhanced, if income distribution is better and the poor become less poor — all of these are important to the values I hold. By now you know something else about me: I believe that the values of the researcher and his research per se are generally inextricably bound together, whether he admits it or not, an idea that is downright anathema to some social scientists and merely tolerated or overlooked by others. I believe that the new technology that is adopted in agriculture must increase marketable production, decrease skewness in the pattern of income distribution, and employ more people more productively in agriculture. On that note, let me commence my digression.

Keywords: food; population; growth; digression; poor; target (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1974
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