His pairing of "food, water, and television" is deliberately ironic, showing how the modern world and modern generations of users of the land have little sense of real priorities of what is a necessity. Not only will the "twelve million" place added demands upon the earth, but the part of the twelve million from the modern industrialized world is likely to be more needy and more greedy than past generations. This quote thus shows the respect for ecology evidenced...

This makes Leon worry, and should make the reader worry to, Ray suggests -- and learn from the example of Leon and others chronicled in her text.
Works Cited

Ray, Janisse. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. New York: Milkweed Edition Reprint, 2000.