Malthus said that population increase had an increased demand on food supply and said that with increased demand would eventually decrease food production. This idea is based upon the law of diminishing returns were increased population would increase the pressure on to farm more intensively and cultivate poorer land leading to poorer yields.
There are limitations to Malthus theory though. He could not have seen the massive changes in farming technology that enables us to produce so much food. He also failed to predict that the reduced population growth as countries develop economically and progress through the later stages of the demographic transition model.
In 1965 Ester Boserup, a Danish economist asserted that an increase in population would stimulate technologists to increase food production. As Boserup said any rise in population would increase demand for food and this would act as an incentive to change agrarian technology and produce more food. Her theory can be summed up by the sentence ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. Therefore population growth will spark innovators who will solve the problems which the increasing population has caused therefore making it sustainable for a growing population.
The limitations to Boserup’s theory are that her idea is also based on a ‘closed’ community. In reality they are not closed because of migration in and out and therefore it would be difficult to test Boserup’s theory.
Even though they are two opposing theories they do have some similarities. They are both based on ‘closed’ communities which at a global scale is not true. They are similar by the way they both agree that a rise in population will increase demand for food. However they completely differ on what the consequences will be.
As Malthus says increased demand for food will eventually cause food production to decrease due to the law of diminishing returns. Which in a nut shell is when over cultivation of arable land will result in soil erosion and crop failures. As Boserup has a completely opposing view that increased population would increase food production.
We have to remember that Malthus wrote his essay in 1798 before the agriculture revolution therefore he excluded technology from his theory therefore making it slightly inaccurate. As Boserup wrote her theory in 1968 and has seen the effect technology can have crop yield therefore the two theories contrast.
Also Malthus and Boserup disagree on the outcomes of increased population as Malthus said that population cant increase above the food supplies otherwise in positive checks would occur. Basically Malthus talks about about controlling a population by preventative checks and how the population must be kept below the crisis point otherwise these positive checks will occur. In contrast Boserup does the opposite and says famine and war will be prevented by human solutions increasing food production by technology.
Therefore the two theories have different answers as to how to make a sustainable population which will survive in food resources.
by
mwalsh94 (student)
