Malthus vs. Boserup
Thomas Malthus was born into a wealthy family. He was educated privately and studied at Cambridge University.
He later married, had three children and became Professor of Political Economy at the East India Company's college in Hertfordshire. His students affectionately referred to him as 'Pop' or 'Population' Malthus.
In 1978, Malthus wrote an influential essay about population. He believed that population grew EXPONENTIALLY (doubling at each stage - 1:2:4:8:16 etc), but that food production grew ARITHMETICALLY (adding one unit at each stage - 1:2:3:4:5 etc).
This meant that population would eventually overtake available food supply. At this point, the population would decrease through starvation. Mathus called this a 'natural check' on population growth. Other natural checks are war, disease and morality.
According to Malthus, whenever population outstripped the supply of resources, 'natural checks' would come into play. The population would be reduced to a more manageable level and would continue to grow again until the next 'natural check'.
Ester Boserup was a Danish economist who worked for the United Nations.
In 1965 she published The Conditions of Agricultural Growth. This book opposed the ideas of Malthus. Boserup did not like the idea of 'natural checks'.
She argued that food production does not limit or control population growth. Instead, she said that population growth controls farming methods. She believed that people would try not to give in to disease or famine. Instead, they would invent solutions to the problem. We can see some of these ideas today with GM crops such as dwarf wheat and the Green revolution where farming equipment and methods were drastically improved.
She used the term 'agricultural intensification' to explain how farmers can grow more food from the same piece of land using better farming techniques and chemical fertilisers.
