Quote:
Originally Posted by mapuc
Skybird wrote
We are too many
Well are we too many, or are the resources distributed unevenly ?
Markus
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Europe as a whole is around 750 million people, a study has shown that one person would require 17 acres of farm land to be self sufficient in all areas (including meat and dairy) if your a vegetarian the land mass required would drop to 10 acres per person.
So if you said 1/3 of the population of 750 million (250 million) were Vegetarian you would need 2.5 BILLION acres to sustain just that population for the year by growing crops, the land mass of all of Europe put together is 2.6bn Acres.
Now of course the above is just a massive over simplification, because in reality you don't / cant really grow everything in one area because you require different soils, heat units, irrigation, temperature control etc.
This is why trading is required, for example Spain grows fantastic oranges, yet Iceland cant grow any due to their climate but they have great fish supplies.
Ukraine can grow great amounts of wheat, Barley and rye but not as good corn or oats, but Germany can grow great oats and corn so they trade it.
What that does is allow the above over simplified calculation to be split and re aligned re distributed etc.
So are we over populated ? in some ways yes in food supply no