Notes on Malthusian Ideas and Related Matters

                                                                          IG, San Francisco, March 2020

Notes on Malthusian Ideas and related matters

(or the road traveled from Malthus to European immigration in the 21st Century)

Recently I reread several notes on the  Malthusian catastrophe and related ideas. While for some time the  Malthusian ideas had been already rejected by most mainstream economists and political scientists, the definitive proof of observable data for its rejection was provided by the result of the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution, also known as the Third Agricultural Revolution, redefined agriculture in the developing world during the 1950s and early 1960s. Those were also the years of my Berkeley studies when I was much interested in philosophy, political science, economy, and the evolution of the global battle between communism and capitalism; the success of the Green Revolution was very much part of my studies and are major parts of my personal memories of that era.

Some would argue that the Green revolution peaked in the late 1960s, others argue that it is still ongoing. I will comment on this later, but there is a general agreement that the Green Revolution is the result of highly successful agri-technology initiatives that started in the 1940s and made their initial major impacts worldwide in the 1950s and 1960s.

Thomas Malthus was an English clergyman who studied and wrote extensively about economics. His fundamental belief was that the population of the world is doubling about every generation, i.e., every 25 years, while food production lagged significantly behind, and thus Humanity was heading into an unmitigated disaster of mass self-extinction. In his publications, he considered both preventive and mitigating actions. His preventive actions included advocacy of birth control and late marriage. He considered war, starvation, and pestilence as mitigating activities since they reduced the number of people who needed to be fed.

In the post-world War II period, while the developed world had no difficulty producing enough food to feed its people, there were significant worrisome signs in the developing world that Malthus may have been right. Some parts of Latin America, and also India, were not producing enough to feed their growing populations. After the Revolution In Mexico (1910-1920), the land reforms solved a political problem but created a new problem: food production was dropping.  Already in the 1940s, the Mexican government authorities recognized that to feed their people they needed to improve agricultural productivity and were seeking technical solutions. 

Possibly as a rare benefit derived from the conflict of The Cold War, the US came to Mexico’s rescue by undertaking the development of agricultural improvements that prevented the impending disasters of mass starvation and political unrest in the developing world. 

Key elements of the effort were the development of improved yield seeds, well-controlled irrigation, large-scale production, and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers. The initial developments took place in Mexico. The Mexican model was then employed worldwide. 

Norman Borlaug (1914-2009), an American agronomist led agricultural Improvement initiatives worldwide that became known as the Green Revolution. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and he is now considered the father of the Green Revolution. He started his career with DuPont but in 1944 he moved to Mexico to head a new program of wheat research and production, associated with the Mexican Government and funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. The program also received support from the US government, the United Nations, and FAO. 

The Green Revolution that started in Mexico also achieved its first major successes there. The early efforts focused on the development of special high-yield variety (HYV) seeds. To appreciate the degree of success achieved, it's worthwhile to note that in 1943 Mexico was importing about half of its wheat need and by 1964 it was exporting a surplus of half a million tons per year.

Mexico's early Green Revolution success was subsequently followed up by successes in several developing countries. India's wheat production increased by more than 400% by 1986. A breeding program in the Philippines resulted in the IR8 miracle rice that was quickly adopted throughout Asia. In the adoptive countries, the rice yield increased by 52% by 1983. During the same period, in countries where the new varieties had not been adopted, the rice yields declined 4%. The story of the Green Revolution in Brazil followed a different path. In some parts of Brazil, the soil was too acidic for agricultural use. Therefore a massive effort of lime dispersal over the fields was undertaken and by the late 1990s about 15 million tons of lime we're spread on the fields yearly.  As a result of these efforts, Brazil became the world’s second-biggest soybean exporter.

It is interesting to note that efforts to bring the Green Revolution to Africa pretty much failed. The reasons for the failure are a combination of corruption, lack of needed infrastructure to support the effort, tribalism, and a mismatch between local preferences and the available HYV seeds. Also, colonialism and its after-effects cannot be ignored. In fact, some parts of Africa, for example, the two Congos, only became independent of Belgium and France in 1960. The postcolonial after-effects include the lack of integration of civil society with the state and a deep mistrust of benevolent state actions. Whatever the reasons, the failure to bring the Green Revolution to Africa, in combination with the large population explosion there, are certainly the most important fundamental reasons the 21st century Europe faces a continuously increasing very serious immigration problem from Africa.

In my view, Humanity has completed three agricultural revolutions and is currently in the fourth one. Some people combine the current one with the third one but in my view, they serve distinctly different purposes and thus I prefer to separate them. The first agricultural revolution occurred in the Neolithic era when Stone Age man domesticated plants and animals and thereby communities could grow larger than was possible previously when Man supported itself through hunting and gathering. The second Agricultural Revolution took place principally in the 17th  through the 19th centuries and it took place in North-Western Europe. During this era, all the new benefits of industrialization were applied to agriculture. It started with the adoption in Holland of the Chinese plow, allowing the use of fewer draft animals than was required to pull the previously used plows. The Dutch version of the Chinese plow was then imported into England by Dutch farmworkers working there. Subsequently, the early phases of the Second Industrial Revolution were principally taking place in the United Kingdom and then spread back onto the European continent. Its primary features were new ideas concerning the use of fertilizers, land reclamation, selective breeding, and crop rotation. The invention of the steam engine also made a significant impact by replacing animals in powering the progressively increasing sizes of machines combining plowing, planting, and harvesting. Transportation also became a significant component of enhancing agricultural productivity, allowing remotely located high productivity agricultural areas to support the growing city populations. By the second half of the 19th century, the Malthusian fear of mass starvation was no longer a concern in the developed world. As already discussed above, the Second Industrial Revolution was followed in the middle of the 20th century by the Green Revolution, or the Third Agricultural Revolution, which basically eliminated mass starvation in most of the developing world. Feeding all of mankind is no longer a question of whether it can be done but it is a question of will, political organization, and investment to deploy the known methods and tools. The Green Revolution slowly morphed into the currently ongoing Fourth Agricultural Revolution. Its objectives are to extend the beneficial results of the Green Revolution to those areas that are still living with agriculture that may not even be at the level achieved by much of the developed world during the Second Agricultural Revolution. Furthermore, mankind now faces new issues related to climate change and human-caused environmental stress. Simply stated, while we do know how to produce enough to feed and clothe and house all of us, our environmental, or ecological, footprint exceeds what is available on Earth. Since we do not know how to grow the Earth, we must shrink our footprint. While we may be able to develop still more efficient higher-yielding crops and less environmentally stressing fertilizers, most likely the most significant progress we can make in our footprint reduction is by switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources: switching to electrically-driven agricultural machinery from the currently used internal combustion-engine driven ones. 

Unlike political revolutions, agricultural revolutions cannot be defined by precise start and end dates.  Thus in the foregoing, the indicated time periods are approximate but they allow the significant agricultural events to be placed into a general historical context. The most significant message regarding Malthus and his ideas is that the Malthusian social ideas are completely debunked. Starting with the Age of Enlightenment, followed by the development of the scientific method and the Industrial Revolution, humanity is able to control much of its destiny. 

In closing, I wish to comment on the interrelationship between national wealth, agriculture, crime, and migration.

In the modern world, there is no nation on Earth whose economy simultaneously is dominated by agriculture and who also can be considered amongst those who can claim to be high GDP per capita producers. A set of very interesting analyses of agricultural employment was published by Our World in Data. One of their analyses covers the period from 1801 through 2010 and it shows on a single scatterplot graph the share of agricultural employment worldwide versus GDP per capita, using 2011 International Dollars. The data allows a straight-line approximation of the plot, showing on the linear vertical axis the percent employment in agriculture and on the logarithmic horizontal axis the GDP per capita. At $1,000 per capita  GDP, close to 80% of the people are employed in agriculture, at $10,000 per capita GDP about 30% work in agriculture, and in the USA In 2010 with close to $50,000 per capita GDP about 2% of the population worked in agriculture. Another analysis, from the same source, covering a period of about 700 years from 1300 through 2012, shows that all over Europe the share of agriculture in total employment significantly declined beginning at about 1800 and the decline continued into the 21st century. Clearly this decline indicates the success of the Second and Third Agricultural Revolutions. (See: https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture)

It is generally well known that fertility rate, and thus population growth declines with increasing income. The US FED carried out a global study examining the quantitative relationship between fertility rate and  GDP per capita. (https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/december/link-fertility-income) The published data shows that at an income level of a few hundred dollars GDP per capita the fertility rate is approximately 6, as GDP increases it continuously declines and once it reaches about $100,000 it is beginning to approach 1. It matches the replacement rate of 2.1 at about $10,000 GDP per capita. Clearly the USA and Europe follow this pattern and their native-born birth rates are below the replacement rate. In 2019 the EU had $44,500 GDP/cap PPP and a birthrate of 1.6. And so does Sub-Saharan Africa but on the opposite side. In 2017, Nigeria had $5,900 GDP/cap PPP and a birth rate of 4.72. In The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the corresponding figures were $800 and 5.77, Furthermore, in the DRC, 70% of the population is engaged in agriculture, cultivating about one-eighth of the available land, while receiving an excellent 147cm/year rainfall and 23-27C monthly average temperature; nevertheless, child malnutrition is widespread and most of the population lives in conditions of food insecurity. Major ongoing international efforts are engaged in assisting the economic advancement of the DRC, however political uncertainties interfere with significant progress.  (Data sources: CIA Factbook, USAID website, and DRC USA embassy website).

Major undesirable events in other parts of the world are beginning to cause starvation and displacement of several groups. The Syrian War forces millions of people to move from their homes and the narcotics trade in Central America is causing waves of migration heading north. While these forces are primarily not destroying agriculture, their effect on the well-being and feeding of the people is strongly negative. Clearly politics, war, violence, and social instability can cause significant local food supply and personal security problems. Again it is not a question whether we can take care of our people but it is a question whether the local powers wish to do so and whether the local social issues and conditions allow local powers to act contrary to the public good.

Clearly we know how to produce enough food for all people. Where there are shortages, most notably in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, the major unresolved issues that block the rapid full-scale adaptation of the results of agricultural revolutions that eliminated hunger and helped to boost modern economies are political and social in nature. - - Resolving these issues is key both to improving the lives of millions of people and to ease the migration pressure facing Europe, and to a lesser extent North America, already now. These pressures are huge now and will be even greater in the next half-century.

The optimistic view is to look forward to when all of Mankind practices the best agriculture technologies and reaches income levels commensurate with what is today the norm in the developed world. An interesting question though arises:  what will happen when all people enjoy a GDP/cap close to $100,000 a year, available today in the richest societies? According to the current data cited above, the birthrate then will fall not only below the replacement rate of 2.1 but may also fall below 1. Will mankind self exterminate at that point, possibly in a few generations? Will the populations collapse at a rate that none of the institutions of society and no part of the economy can continue functioning? Back to subsistence farming and then to hunting and gathering? I have no answer but I find the question interesting.

As I am writing this in March of 2020, it is impossible to conclude without a reference to the coronavirus COVID-19. It now permeates our daily lives at every level. The global economy is virtually shut down. Much of Europe and the USA stopped working, China is now beginning to start up after several weeks, or more, of enforced closure. My guess is that the world will have missed several months of productive activity with virtually zero GDP. How will this end and what will be the consequences? I do not know. Nothing like this happened in our history. I brace myself and hope for the best. Some believe that a new world, unknown to us, is coming.

P.S. According to some online news today, March 30, 2020, COVOD-19 arrived in Sub-Saharan Africa. Social distancing, the first line of defense to slow the spread of the virus in urban areas around the rest of the world, may not be applicable here. In Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, initial plans by the governor of the city to implement lock-down rules to accomplish social distancing were withdrawn as undeployable because many of the city’s 12 million residents live in congested housing without running water. Many of the other 90 million inhabitants of the DRC live in widely spread out rural areas where social distancing may be less necessary, less effective, and less enforceable. What will all this mean in the future? I make no prediction other than here too COVID-19 will have major impacts on all aspects of modern life, on society, politics, and economics.