Human Carrying Capacity and World Hunger 2
When Food Resources have Reached the Limit  

Articles & Lessons >> Green Topics >> Series: Human Carrying Capacity 1-3 >> HCC island>> HCC limits >> HCC solutions

How do we Know that the Carrying Capacity has been Reached?

There is a very practical way to know if the carrying capacity for food resources has been met: notice how many people are going hungry because there is no more food to be had.

Responses of the population as a whole and groups within the population will respond in a variety of ways. Some possibilities are these.

• People will eat less than they need to stay healthy so that what food there is will be shared.
• People will fight others for the food available, even killing whole groups of other people.
• People will eat animals and plants that they do not normally eat.
• People will die from hunger.
• People will try to leave the area, to move to where there is food.

Meanwhile, the population will be under tremendous stress due to constant hunger or worry about finding food for the next meal. Tempers will flair, and negative social behaviors will increase. Bodies weakened by hunger and malnutrition will be more prone to disease, accident and stress-related inherited conditions.

As the deaths from hunger, disease, accident, and other causes increase, the population size will decrease. Often, the decrease in population results in enough food for those that are left.

When a population is close to its carrying capacity, the conditions of enough and not enough cycle back and forth: vascillating above and below the actual carrying capacity value. The balance is precarious, with the threat of famine constantly looming.

Each of the possible responses listed above has a range of possible consequences. Often the full range of responses is taken by the population as different groups respond in different ways. Furthermore, each surviving group must face a future of cycling through times of plenty, times of adequate food, and times of scarcity; many groups will change their responses, reacting differently with each cycle.
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Articles on Feeding the World's Population
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