Agriculture and population.

• Author: Hempel, Marilyn
• Position: FROM READERS - Letter to the editor

Your recent essay "Ripe for Change: Agriculture's Tipping Point" [by Claire Cummings, July/August 2006], was good in so many ways. However, it failed to state that in order for any society, and its agriculture, to be sustainable for the long term, that society must have a stable population, stable at a number that ecologically productive land and water can support. With world (and U.S.) population still growing at an unsustainable rate, there is no way that sustainable agriculture will feed all the people. If we want to eliminate agribusiness and its harmful practices, as well as eradicate poverty, we must stabilize, and probably lower, the world's population.

MARILYN HEMPEL

Pop!ulation...