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What Is Urban Sprawl?

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John Meyer
Urban Sprawl: Feeding the World on Less Land
South Dakota State University
Dr. Agostini

Introduction Many people have heard or seen the commercials about how a farmer feeds 155 people in today’s world vs 28 people in years past (http://www.sdcorn.org). Farmers need to produce more food in the next 40 years than in the previous 10,000 years combined. According to the United Nations, 1 billion people across the globe suffer from chronic hunger today. This number is expected to dramatically increase as the world’s population grows to a projected 9 billion by 2050, requiring a 70 percent increase in the amount of food the world’s farmers produce annually (). The problem the world faces is how to feed the ever-growing population off of diminishing acres of farm land. It is urgent that the world comes together to form a plan to control the amount of land consumed by urban sprawl. …show more content…

Urban sprawl describes the physical expansion of low density urban areas into forest and agricultural environments. ( Pereira, Paulo, Algirdas Monkevičius, and Hanna Siarova, 2016) Urban sprawl is much like the name suggests, urban populations sprawling out over vast amounts of once productive farm ground. Unlike years past, much of today’s population resides in urban areas. This trend of rural populations moving towards more populated urban centers continues to grow extremely fast. To help curb this threat to our farmers there needs to be planning and coordination throughout the U.S. and the world as these urban centers swallow up more and more

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