Abstract
Population pressure and human adaptation to food security demands through technology have been a dominant concern of researchers and policymakers alike in international development. This paper examines neo-Malthusian and technoecological determinants of food security in lesser-industrialized societies between 1970 and 1990 using an OLS regression of food security change. Findings reveal that population pressure and overurbanization concerns are indeed valid for food availability, having negative implications, while adaptive measures such as the application of fertilizer technologies, land-use intensification, infrastructural development, and the internationalization of food markets help balance these negative effects. Interestingly, such technological improvements operate net of increased food availability and economic growth. Thus, Green Revolution technologies and the internationalization of global food systems have confronted population pressure in the developing world. However, findings are less conclusive for food access, indicating that improvement in availability does not necessarily translate into meeting distribution needs, thus challenging the ability of these two theories to comprehensively explain the complexities of food security. Questions therefore remain with regard to future food security concerns.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Babu, Suresh Chandra, and Victoria J. Quinn 1994 “Food security and nutrition monitoring in Africa.” Food Policy 19:211–217.
Barkin, David 1990 Distorted Development: Mexico in the World Economy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Barkin, David, Rosemary L. Blatt, and Billie R. DeWalt 1990 Food Crops vs. Feed Crops: Global Substitution of Grains in Production. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Berry, Robert A., and William Cline 1979 Agrarian Structure and Productivity in Developing Countries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bollen, Kenneth A., and Robert W. J ackman 1985 “Regression diagnostics: An expository treatment of outliers and influential cases.” Sociological Methods and Research 13:510–542.
Bongaarts, John 1996 “Population pressure and the food supply system in the developing world.” Population and Development Review 22:483–503.
Boserup, Ester 1965 The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change Under Population Pressure. Chicago: Aldine.
1981 Population and Technological Change: A Study of Long-Term Trends. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bradshaw, York 1985 “Overurbanization and underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa: A cross-national study.” Studies in Comparative International Development 20:74–101.
1987 “Urbanization and underdevelopment: A global study of modernization, urban bias, and economic dependency.” American Sociological Review 52:224–239.
Bradshaw, York, Rita Noonan, Laura Gash, and Claudia Buchmann Sershen 1993 “Borrowing against the future: Children and Third World indebtedness.” Social Forces 71:629–656.
Breusch, Trevor S., and Adrian Pagan 1979 “A simple test for heteroskedasticity and random coefficient variation.” Econometrica47: 1287–1294.
Brown, Lester1991 “Fertilizer engine losing steam.”World Watch4:32–33.
Brown, Lester, and Hal Kane 1994 Full House: Reassessing the Earth's Population Carrying Capacity. New York: W.W. Norton.
Cheatham, Marcus 1994 “War, military spending, and food security in Africa.” in Norman A. Graham (ed.), Seeking Security and Development: 229–253. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner.
Cohen, Joel E. 1995 How Many People Can the Earth Support? New York: W.W. Norton.
Committee on World Food Security 1996 Rome Declaration onWorld Food Security and World Food Summit Plan of Action. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Crenshaw, Edward M. 1998 Personal communication. The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.
1993 “Polity, economy and technoecology.” Social Forces 71:807–816.
Crenshaw, Edward M., Ansari Ameen, and Matthew Christenson 1997 “Population dynamics and economic development: Age-specific population growth rates and economic growth in developing countries, 1965 to 1990.” American Sociological Review 62:974–984.
Crosby, Alfred 1986 Ecological Imperialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
de Janvry, Alain 1976 “Material determinants of the world food crisis.” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 21:3–26.
1980 “Agriculture in crisis and crisis in agriculture.” Society 17:36–39.
1989 “Land and labour in Latin American agriculture from the 1950s to the 1980s.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 16:396–424.
Dréeze, Jean, and Amartya K. Sen 1989 Hunger and Public Action. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ehrlich, Paul R., and Anne H. Ehrlich 1990 The Population Explosion. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Ehrlich, Paul R., Anne H. Ehrlich, and Gretchen C. Daily 1993 “Food security, population, and environment.” Population and Development Review 19:1–32.
Finkel, Steven E. 1995 Causal Analysis with Panel Data. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Firebaugh, Glenn, and Frank D. Beck 1994 “Does economic growth benefit the masses? Growth, dependence and welfare in the Third World.” American Sociological Review 59:631–653.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 1972 FAO Yearbook 1972: Production. Rome, Italy: FAO.
1982 FAO Yearbook 1982: Production. Rome, Italy: FAO.
1992 FAO Yearbook dy</del>1992: Production. Rome, Italy: FAO.
1996 The Sixth World Food Survey. Rome, Italy: FAO.
Foster, Phillips 1992 The World Food Problem. Boulder, CO: Lynne-Reinner.
Friedmann, Harriet 1993 “The political economy of food.” New Left Review 197:29–37.
1994 “Distance and durability: Shaky foundations of the world food economy.” In Philip McMichael (ed.), The Global Restructuring of Agro-Food Systems: 258–276. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Gereffi, Gary, and Stephanie Fonda 1992 “Regional paths of development.” Annual Review of Sociology 18:419–448.
Griffin, Keith 1987 World Hunger and the World Economy. New York: Holmes and Meier.
Harper, Charles 1996 Environment and Society. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Hawley, Amos 1968 “Ecology.” In David L. Sills (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences: 328–337. New York: MacMillan.
Heilig, Gerhard K. 1994 “Neglected dimensions of global landuse change: reflections and data.” Population and Development Review 20:831–859.
Homer-Dixon, Thomas 1995 “The ingenuity gap: Can poor countries adapt to resource scarcity?” Population and Development Review 21:587–612.
1999 Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Homer-Dixon, Thomas, and Jessica Blitt (eds.) 1998 Ecoviolence: Links among Environment, Population, and Security. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
The International Road Transport Union 1976 World Transport Data. Geneva: IRTU.
The International Soil Reference and Information Centre 1991 World Map of the Status of Human-Induced Soil Degradation, 2nd edn. Wageningen, the Netherlands: ISRIC.
Jackman, Robert 1980 “A note on the measurement of growth rates in cross-national research.” American Journal of Sociology 86:604–617.
Jenkins, J. Craig, and Stephen J. Scanlan 2001 “Improving food security in less developed countries: A longitudinal analysis of food supply and child hunger in LDCs, 1970–1990,” Unpublished manuscript.The Ohio State University.
Judge, George G., W. E. Griffiths, R. Carter Hill, Helmut Lütkepohl, and Tsoung-Chao Lee 1985 The Theory and Practice of Econometrics. 2nd edn. New York: Wiley.
Kelly, Marion 1992 “Anthropometry as an indicator of access to food in populations prone to famine.” Food Policy 17:443–454.
Kutzner, Patricia 1991 World Hunger: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara,CA: ABC-CLIO.
Lappé, Frances Moore, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset 1998 World Hunger:Twelve Myths, 2nd edn. New York: Grove Press.
Lay, Maxwell G. 1992 Ways of the World: A History of the World's Roads and of the Vehicles that Used Them. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Lipton, Michael 1977 Why Poor People Stay Poor: A Study of Urban Bias inWorld Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Macrae, Joanna, and Anthony Zwi (eds.) 1994 War and Hunger.London: Zed Books.
Maxwell, Simon 1996 “Food security: A post-modern perspective.” Food Policy 21:155–170.
McClendon, McKee J. 1994 Multiple Regression and Causal Analysis. Itasca, IL: F.E. Peacock.
McMichael, Philip 1994 “Introduction: Agro-food system restructuring-Unity in diversity.” In Philip McMichael (ed.), The Global Restructuring of Agro-Food Systems: 1–17. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
1996 Development and Social Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Meadows, Donella H., Dennis L. Meadows, and Jorgen Randers 1992 Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future. Post Mills, VT: Chelsea Green.
Micklin, Michael, and Harvey M. Choldin, (eds.) 1984 Sociological Human Ecology: Contemporary Issues and Applications. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Nolan, Patrick D., and Gerhard Lenski 1985 “Technoecological heritage, patterns of development, and the advantage of backwardness.” Social Forces 64:341–358.
Ophuls, William, and A. Stephen Boyan, Jr. 1992 Ecology and thePolitics of Scarcity Revisited. New York: W.H. Freeman.
Quinn, Victoria J., and Eileen Kennedy 1994 “Food security and nutrition monitoring systems in Africa.” Food Policy 19:234–254.
Reutlinger, Schlomo 1986 Poverty and Hunger: Issues and Options for Food Security in Developing Countries. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Sahn, David E., Richard Lockwood, and Nevin S. Scrimshaw 1984 Methods for the Evaluation of the Impact of Food and Nutrition Programmes. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.
Scanlan, Stephen J., and J. Craig Jenkins 2001 “Military power and food security: A cross-national analysis of less developed countries, 1970–1990.” International Studies Quarterly.
Sen, Amartya 1981 Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. New York: Oxford University Press.
1995 “Food, economics, and entitlement.” In Jean Dréze, Amartya Sen, and Athar Hussain (eds.), The Political Economy of Hunger: 50–68. New York: Oxford University Press.
Simon, Julian L. 1981 The Ultimate Resource. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
1990 Population Matters: People, Resources, Environment, and Immigration. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Smil, Vaclav 1991 “Population growth and nitrogen: An exploration of a critical existential link” Population and Development Review 17:569–601.
1994 “How many people can the Earth feed?” Population and Development Review 20:255–292.
Summers, Robert, and Alan Heston 1991 “The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An expanded set of international comparisons, 1950–1988.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 106:327–368.
Tweeten, Luther G. 1997 “Food security.” In Luther G. Tweeten and Donald G. McClelland (eds.), Promoting Third-World Development and Food Security: 225–226.Westport, CT: Praeger.
Tweeten, Luther G., and Donald G. McClelland (eds.) 1997 Promoting Third-World Development and Food Security. Westport, CT: Praeger.
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) 1998 The State of the World's Children 1998. New York: Oxford University Press.
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 1994 Human Development Report 1994. New York: Oxford University Press.
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) 1999 Food for the Future: Women, Population, and Food Security. New York: The United Nations. [http://www. unfpa.org/modules/intercenter/food/ index.htm].
Watts, Michael 1983 Silent Violence. Berkeley: The University of California Press.
Wimberley, Dale W., and Rosario Bello 1992 “Effects of foreign investments, exports, and economic growth on Third World food consumption.” Social Forces 70:895–922.
World Bank 1994 World Data 1994 [CD-ROM]. Washington, DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [Producer and Distributor].
1997 World Development Indicators [CDROM]. Washington, DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [Producer and Distributor].
World Health Organization 1985 Energy and Protein Requirements: Report of a Joint FAO/WHO/ UNU Expert Consultation. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO.
World Resources Institute 1992 World Resources 1992–1993. New York: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Scanlan, S.J. Food Availability and Access in Lesser-Industrialized Societies: A Test and Interpretation of Neo-Malthusian and Technoecological Theories. Sociological Forum 16, 231–262 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011000717740
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011000717740