Population and Food

A growing world's population and the discoveries of science may alter this pattern of distribution in the future. As men slowly learn to master disease, control floods, prevent famines, and stop wars, fewer people die every year; and in consequence the population of the world is steadily increasing.

When numbers rise, the extra mouths must be fed. New lands must be brought under cultivation, or land already farmed made to yield larger crops. In some areas the accessible land is largely so intensively cultivated that it will be difficult to make it provide more food. In some areas the population is so dense that the land is parceled out in units too tiny to allow for much improvement in farming methods. Were a large part of this farming population drawn off into industrial occupation, the land might be farmed much more productively by modern methods.

There is now a race for science, technology, and industry to keep the output of food rising faster than the number of people to be fed. New strains of crops are being developed which will thrive in unfavorable climates: there are new farms beyond the Arctic Circle in Siberia and North America; irrigation and dry-farming methods bring arid lands under the plough; dams hold back the waters of great rivers to ensure water for the fields in all seasons and to provide electric power for new industries; industrial chemistry provides fertilizers to suit particular soils; airplanes spray chemicals to destroy locusts and many plant diseases. Every year some new means is devised to increase or to protect the food of the world.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why is the world's population growing?
2. On what condition might the land be more productively farmed?
3. How has it been made possible that there are new farms beyond the Arctic Circle?
4. What does the word "strains" in Paragraph 3 mean?
5. What does the passage focus on?

(Keys.)