How does the competition for food and space affect the growth of natural populations?

Question

How does the competition for food and space affect the growth of natural populations?

Answer 1

This competition always goes two ways. In nature, individual means nothing. The survival of a certain type of gene, or, ifyou want a certain string of information that the individuals are bearing, is the issue. So, specimens of the same species have similar strings of genetic information, meaning that above all, it is important that the species as a whole survives. That often means that they are reproducing far beyond the rate of simple reproduction. Their numbers will grow.

As a species lives on certain type of food and fills a certain type of environment, it will have to develop strategies to deter other species wehich might like to use the same food and space. This can be done in many ways, by developing a repugnant odor or a type of behavior that repulses others, or by developing ability to find food earlier and devour it faster than the competition. In some cases the species may develop the ability to use the same space and food, but at different time. Still, if there are no predators, the number of specimens will overgrow the ability of environment to feed them. Food will become scarce. Different species develop different strategies for dealing with such a situation. Lions and rats fight. Wolves and jackals lower their reproduction rate by an ingenious mechanism:

When the food is plentiful, they hunt in small packs, usually a pair , their last years offspring and maybe another animal or two. When the food is scarce, they gather into huge packs of twenty to sixty animals. As it is known that in each pack only the leading pair will mate and produce offspring, this automatically decreases the reproduction rate. Herbivores, like deer, rabbits and alike, usually develop diseases and die in their hundreds. Lemigs start their suicidal march.

If there is any proof that humans are biologically speaking, animals, it is because we basically follow the same patterns. From the times we became the supreme predator of the planet, our numbers constantly grow. There have been many warnings and many aspirations to stop this alarming growth rate by many sorts of regulations, but mostly all of them failed. The most successful factor to regulate human numbers was and probably still is, disease. That means that basically here we are following the pattern of herbivores, not those of predators. But at some time, we can and indeed have chosen to fight. There have been many wars or skirmishes for springs, pastures or hunting grounds since the beginning of human history. Later they developed into wars for silver, gold and copper mines and now it is basically about oil.

In the basis, all the competition for space and food is about energy. Have we had developed a mechanism to extract energy directly from the sun, as plants do, then we would need only the space we fisically occupy. But since we are dependent on energy that must be produced elsewhere, we need and exploit also the space, necessary for the production of this energy. The so-called developed world is consuming fossil energy, meaning that the actual space necessary for producing the amount of energy we use would require ten or more planets the size of Earth. That is why decreasing birth-rates in developed world mean nothing, ecologically. Even if our numbers are decreasing, our needs are increasing. The situation is becoming dangerous. Leaving aside the fact that it contradicts some most basic principles of fairness that have been biologically inbuilt into our brains, it is dangerous as such. Smaller and smaller number of privileged ones that use everything, forcing increasing numbers of underdeveloped to live on a fraction of what the privileged consider minimal requirements, is explosive. A very dangerous situation, indeed. And still we don't have any sound political answer, meaning that against the force of ecological laws we are helpless. Doomed to multiply until the point of the final showdown. It is difficult to say what it will look like, but the ecological laws say that numbers of humanity will be decimated by it.  

Answer 2

how not? There are more people competing for food and spaces. So, there would be shortages everywhere. You have basically 2 optioins. First move the demand curve to the left reduce the consumption of food and space i.e. (kill all the people reduce the population)

second move the supply curve to the right to reduce the shortages. You can do it by 3 ways. First, subsidies always move the supply curve to the right to increase consumption. Second government start to produce food themselves. Third, if they have buffer stock, use them.

If not those aren't valid options, then let people die. ie your way. It will have a pretty huge effect on the growth of natural poplution b/c people don't have enough to eat. So they die.