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Population pressure, the environment and agricultural intensification: variations on the Boserup hyp |
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The interaction between population growth, the environment, and
agricultural intensification raises the most compelling and most
controversial issues currently facing developing countries. Given the
low initial population densities, the benefits of increasing population
on agricultural development have been widely documented by Boserup in
1961 and Ruthenberg in 1982. These authors argued that slowly
increasing population densities have desirable effects on technical
change, land and labor productivity, and rural per capita incomes
through changes in relative factor prices. Others have pointed out that
while high population densities may be desirable in stimulating rural
markets and technological adaptation, rapid population growth is very
costly to countries at early stages of development. This report shows
that the environmental damage from the reduction of bush fallow, the
more intensive use of land without supplementary biological and
chemical inputs, and the depletion of forestry resources complicates
the transition from low to more densely populated areas as originally
envisaged in the Boserup hypothesis. The paper also demonstrates that
the most pragmatic means of achieving rapid growth in agriculture
production, employment and incomes in rapid population growth and
declining extensive margin is to focus resources and policy attention
on areas responsive to chemical fertilizers and improved seed.
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