The great irony of agriculture is that more efficient farming practices have invariably led to population increases. The very effort of meeting the demand for food also creates it. Some anthropologists speculate that the practice of agriculture was in itself a response to increasing population in approximately 10000 b.c. The simplest and earliest method of obtaining food, hunting and gathering, could support only a limited number of people over a given geographic area. Although, according to scholarly thought, people may have grown small numbers of vegetables or penned young animals to fatten in earlier times, reliance on agriculture as the main source of food may have come about largely when the population of a given region rose beyond the critical maximum that hunting alone could support. Agriculture provided a more reliable food supply. It also meant a higher yield and better quality of meat...