Elite "Green" Westerners, who have clamourously opposed many recent developments in food technology - usually from a knee-jerk, pseudo-leftist platform, with its concomitant, rather childish good-guys-bad-guys mindset - haven't helped, either.

Witness Greenpeace and Friend of the Earth's despicable campaign in Zambia.

"some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things" - Norman Borlaug

* reductions in the fertility rate (births per woman) has come as a result of increased standard of living. Providing education and economic opportunities, particularly to women, reduces family size and delays birth of the first child*

Agronomist, just think about this rationally for a minute. If we
stuck you and your partner out in the sticks, with no money, no tv
and no family planning of any kind, chances are pretty high that
you would land up with a tribe of kids as well.

Fact is that women in the third world are screaming for just the
very basics, but we have major interference here, above all from
the religious lobby.

Many medical services in places like Africa are run by the Catholics.
When women want their tubes tied, or an implant, or even condoms,
they are turned away, being told its all evil. They finally need
a REAL choice.

Of course raising their standard of living helps, because finally
they might have some money to do something about their situation
of depending on charity for these things, as they do right now.

All I am saying is give all women a choice. You would be amazed
when they have that choice, how they decide to change their lives.

If you want to produce more food in Africa, so give people written
land titles and microfinance, so that they can buy fertilisers,
small equipment etc.

The IMF and World Bank have to take responsibility for a lot of hunger in Africa. Take Rwanda, for example, incredibly fertile and a place where a family could at least grow enough food for itself, no matter how poor - but the international money bullies insisted that produce had to be exported not eaten. Result - very hungry Rwandans in a land of plenty while overfed Americans and Europeans eat their food.

Yabby, there have been family planning initiatives in Africa for nearly 40 years now. Family planning alone does not appear to be sufficient to reduce fertility rates. There is however a very good relationship between per capita GDP and fertility rates, regardless of religion. Israel and Saudi Arabia seem to be exceptions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fertility_rate.jpg

In Italy, where about 90% of the population profess Catholicism and 30% are active, they just ignore the Church's teaching about contraception.

The Green movement have us now using land for bio-fuels.This will accelerate the crisis.There only needs to be a small change in climate for a major catastrophe to happen.Global cooling will be far more disasterous.

A finite planet cannot support human expodential growth for much longer.Help to developing countries must have strings attached or we are just making the problem worse.

I love the comment from Agronomist: Italians have religion sorted. Catholic teaching cannot harm you if you ignore it!
Like all Christians they have worked out that it is one thing to belong, it is quite another to actually believe and follow the rantings of the priesthood, especially when provably wrong. There is ample evidence that the "conservative" approach of abstinance education, no condoms, et utterly fails to stop teen sex and disease. This evidence is of course ignored by the faithful (except, it seems the Italians!)
Birth rates will decline when education is universal, women are free to pursue a free life without dependancy on men, and the basics of shelter, security food and water are provided. This requires non-corrupt governance and the end of exploitation by the west. I doubt this will actually happen.
Breeding like rabbits and encouraging ignorance will lead to nature's solution: starvation and disease. Ironically it seems that the biggest Social Darwinists are the church!