Page 84 - Fall2020

Farm and Ranch

FEEDING THE WORLD: MALTHUSIAN IDEAS IN AMERICAN AGRICULTURE
By Anneliese Abbott

The problem, Can organic agriculture feed the world? wins, and feelings are hurt on both sides. Instead
Malthus Many people think it can’t. If every farm in maybe it’s time to dig down to the roots of
the world transitioned to organic methods, they when and where the idea that there might not be
concluded, claim, a couple billion people would die because enough food for everyone in the world entered
was that there wouldn’t be enough food for them. It is into American agriculture. The idea, in fact, goes
people were only through genetic engineering, intensive back to the 1940s—but it was based on theories
fertilization and the use of pesticides that we formed when our country was still in its infancy.
poor simply can even think about feeding the world’s current
because population of over seven billion—not to mention MALTHUS’ PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION
One of the first people to suggest that the
there were the nine billion humans that the United Nations human population might someday get too large
projects will be on the earth by 2050.
too many This line of reasoning is at the root of almost for its food supply was an Englishman named
of them. all opposition to organic farming. It is believed Thomas Robert Malthus (Figure 1), who hast-
and taught by many well-meaning people who ily wrote a short pamphlet entitled Essay on
sincerely want to help end world hunger and the Principle of Population in 1798. In 1803,
poverty. They are not evil chemical company he revised and expanded his ideas into a book-
executives who are trying to take over the world; length work with the same title.
they are humanitarian aid workers, university Malthus’ college training was in math-
professors, agricultural economists, government ematics, and his Essay was an attempt to use
workers and traditional American farmers who mathematical calculations to explain the per-
believe that it is their patriotic duty to produce sistent poverty of the English working class at
as much food as possible. the time. The problem, he concluded, was that
When organic farmers attack these people people were poor simply because there were too
instead of the underlying ideology, it’s like start- many of them.
ing a debate about religion or politics. Nobody The human population, Malthus explained,
was capable of doubling approximately every
twenty-five years, which he called “geometri-
cal” growth. The term “exponential” growth is
FIGURE 1. Portrait of more frequently used today to describe the same
Thomas Robert Malthus phenomenon.
by John Linnell, 1834. Geometrical or exponential growth, pro-
jected out far enough, is a terrifying concept. A
classic illustration is the legendary inventor who
presented his king with a chessboard as a gift.
The king was so pleased with the game that he
asked the inventor what he would like in return.
His price: one grain of rice for the first square
on the chessboard, two grains for the second
square, four for the third and so on—double for
each square. The king readily agreed; it seemed
like a token amount of rice. But it wasn’t. By the
time the king got to the sixty-fourth square on
82 Wise Traditions FALL 2020