Linkages among population, food production, and the environment at multiple scales

Abstract

Human population, its number and distribution on our planet, has a seemingly direct linkage to how much food we consume and how we practice agriculture. How this population-foodenvironment interface manifests across the globe is complex, non-linear, and both local- and scale-dependent. This essay is an overview of the population-food-environment nexus, providing recent history and statistics on these processes at several crude scales. We include a discussion of theory, review different drivers of the population-food-environment processes, provide a global overview of population and agricultural statistics from 1970 to 2010, and discuss trends and implications for Latin America, as well as some specific multi-scale case studies. We conclude with a review of potential future trends and proposed solutions.