Let's clarify the difference between carrying capacity and stocking rate on a property.
Sustainable carrying capacity is the number of animals a given area can run without degrading the natural resources and the current stocking rate is the number of animals actually living on that given area at the moment.
The world we live in is no different to any piece of land, except on a much larger scale.
I would suggest that at the moment the human stocking rate far exceeds the carrying capacity.
This means we are putting too much pressure on our natural resources to provide food and energy for the ever growing population.
So we then look at ways to increase production by clearing more vegetation, using irrigation, chemical fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides and genetic modification etc to grow crops.
We grain feed animals and administer hormones as well as antibiotics, we use artificial insemination and embryo transfers to speed up the rate of genetic change, and the list goes on.
All these changes have been created through the advances in science. They are not natural and so one could argue they are upsetting the natural balance within our environment and within our bodies.
If this is the case, then our health and the health of the environment both start to deteriorate, especially when aided by bad management practices or bad government policies.
When the symptoms of this deterioration becomes dire in the human system, it makes people want to risk their lives to flee their home country and enter into another. Of course, for those people looking for excuses, it is easy to blame climate change for this problem.
So where do we go from here? Treat the cause and not the symptom is what we were all taught as youngsters. To me, this means the world's population needs to reduce, as it is unsustainable at the moment.
This is a whole-of-world problem and maybe the next time our world leaders are meeting at gatherings like the G20 or APEC as well as talking about emissions reduction strategies, they should be discussing a world population reduction strategy.
There is an urgent need to get the human stocking rate back to match the world's carrying capacity.
- Georgetown beef producer Greg Ryan
