Rural population dynamics and agricultural development: issues and consequences observed in Latin America.

This publication is a monograph which was presented at a one-day conference at Cornell University on the links between population and agriculture held on April 26 1991. It "assesses the relationships between population change and long-term agricultural development in the context of contemporary developing countries. First in Part I recent trends in population agriculture and land use practices and environmental degradation in rural areas (deforestation desertification and soil degradation) are reviewed for the 87 developing countries with populations over 1 million circa 1990....Second the theoretical discussion reviews pertinent stimulus-response approaches in which the stimulus is the increase in population density...and responses include land extensification land-intensifying technological change and out-migration...drawing upon earlier theoretical discussions of Malthus Kingsley Davis and Esther Boserup....The major sections of the monograph then follow in Part II where the literature is gleaned for evidence of population-agriculture linkages focusing on Latin America." (EXCERPT)