The immigrant Brazilian farmers are practicing large-scale mechanized agriculture, mostly growing soybeans; that offers little work for the peasants and is leading their communities to shrink in numbers.
"I just want to assure my fellow Catholics that, as priests shrink in numbers," he writes, "congregations do not have to feel they have lost all connection with the sacred just because the role of priests in their lives is contracting".
Older workers will not disappear, or even necessarily shrink in numbers, but they will now have to share power with fresh-faced youths.There has been nothing like this since the advent of the railroads and the "Go west, young man" spirit they created, from which rose the Rockefellers, Morgans and Carnegies.
And those few are shrinking in number.
Rental homes are shrinking in number but still make up about 15percentt of the housing.
The crimes that are attended by an officer in person have also shrunk in number.
Millions of white-backed vultures shrank in number by 99.9% reduced to a mere 11,000 by the early 2000s.
According to Mintel, the market research group, books are the most popular Christmas present under £20 and for independent bookshops, which have shrunk in number by a third to 987 since 2005, Christmas-present books – predominantly biographies and cookery books – are vital.
And Cuba's beleaguered self-employed businesses are shrinking in number, hurt by regulations designed to prevent their operators "getting rich .The last period when Cuba and the United States exchanged friendly gestures ended in 1996, after Cuba shot down two light aircraft, killing four Cuban-Americans who had been scattering leaflets over Havana.
