Out of the Demographic Trap: Hope for Feeding the World. Commentary by Fred Pearce, YaleEnviro360, April 5, 2010. "I bring good news from Machakos, a rural district of Kenya, a couple of hours drive from Nairobi... Since independence in 1963, the Akamba's population has more than doubled. Meanwhile, farm output has risen tenfold. Yet there are also more trees, and soil erosion is much reduced. The Akamba still use simple farming techniques on their small family plots. But today they are producing so much food that when I visited, they were selling vegetables and milk in Nairobi, mangoes and oranges to the Middle East, avocadoes to France, and green beans to Britain. What made the difference? People. They made this transformation by utilizing their growing population to dig terraces, capture rainwater, plant trees, raise animals that provide manure, and introduce more labor-intensive but higher-value crops like vegetables. For them, 'multiplication' of their numbers has been the solution rather than the problem. They have sprung the demographic trap. The story of Machakos convinces me that humanity is not done yet -- our ingenuity may still save us from succumbing to planetary limits, and we can feed a growing world population." Fred Pearce is a freelance author and journalist based in the UK. He is environment consultant for New Scientist magazine and author of the recent books When The Rivers Run Dry and With Speed and Violence.
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