ISLAND PRESS, MARCH 2018Some 220 years ago, the somber-faced cleric and scholar Thomas Malthus made a dire prediction: food production could not possibly keep up with population growth in Great Britain. If measures were not taken to limit family size, chaos, starvation, and misery would ensue. And yet, such measures were not taken. The population exploded, but as it turned out, Malthus’s dystopian vision never came to pass. Agricultural production rose to the challenge.
Malthus’s warnings have a familiar ring today. Once more humanity is staring down the threat of a burgeoning population and concerns that there eventually won’t be enough food to go around. By 2050, we will have almost 10 billion mouths to feed in a world profoundly altered by environmental change.
Will history repeat itself, and again refute Malthusian doomsaying? Or will we and our food production capacity succumb to the pressures of unsustainable population growth?
In How to Feed the World, a diverse group of experts breaks down these crucial questions by tackling issues surrounding food security.
One critical factor that Malthus left out of calculations of population growth and sustainability was the effect of agricultural revolutions. Humans have experienced three such revolutions, each fueled ...
