| More than two centuries ago in his Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Malthus famously issued his dire prediction that mankind was doomed to survival at a subsistence level. His concept of population growth expanding to absorb the available food supply has been roundly contradicted by history, thanks in part to a declining birth rate in rich countries. However, economics is still the “dismal science”, as the underlying idea of natural resource scarcity impinging on the prospects for progress remains a cornerstone of modern economics. In the case of agriculture, the proposition is that more people or richer people increase the demand for food and given the constraint on arable land, this means that food becomes scarce. In economics, price is taken... |
