Thomas Malthus published his famous Essay on Population in 1798 predicting that humanity was doomed to poverty and famine because the human population was growing exponentially, while mankind’s ability to produce food could only increase at a linear rate.

He wrote at a time when the famous curve of human population growth was way down here. The ensuing science-based increases in agricultural production supported a tripling of the human population*. But around the middle of the 20^th century, there was a resurgence of Malthusian predictions of mass famines in the populous countries of Asia that had not yet benefitted from scientific advances in agriculture.