PITY THE POOR MALTHUSIANS:

In his 1968 book The Population Bomb, Stanford University biologist and "overpopulation" alarmist Paul Ehrlich famously predicted that "The battle to feed all of humanity is over ... hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Between 1968 and 2017, the world's population increased by 113 percent from 3.55 billion to 7.55 billion. Over the same time period, the average global food supply per person per day rose from 2,334 calories to 2,962 - a 27 percent increase.

To put the magnitude of that achievement into proper perspective, consider the basic food consumption needs of your fellow human beings. The U.S. government's Dietary Guidelines for 2015-2020 estimate that calorie needs per person per day range from 1,600 to 2,000 for women and 1,900 to 2,500 calories for men. That amounts to an average of 2,000 calories per person per day across sexes and over the entire human lifespan. Hence the crude "2,000 calorie diet" that every American knows about. [...]

Since the discovery of agriculture some 12,000 years ago, most people worked from dawn till dusk to produce enough calories - from fieldwork and husbandry - to see the next day. English records suggest food consumption of 1,500 calories per person per day in the 13th century, rising to 2,000 calories in the 14th century (an unexpected consequence of Black Death, which made land cheap and labor dear), and then falling well below 2,000 calories until the 17th century. It was only in the 18th century that food consumption stabilized above 2,000 calories per person per day.

England was one of the world's most developed regions. In France, calorie consumption remained stuck below 2,000 until the beginning of the 19th century. Not only were people before the Industrial Revolution very inefficient in producing food, but access to food was very precarious. Many people were only one bad harvest away from starvation. Children were routinely employed in agricultural tasks at the age of 4, and woe unto an old or sick peasant without a family or charity to depend on.

According to the most recent estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, food supply in only two out of 173 countries surveyed stood below 2,000 calories per person per day in 2017 - the Central African Republic (1,758) and Madagascar (1,903). In Afghanistan it stood at 2,000. Everywhere else, it stood above 2,000 calories. Belgium and the United States topped the survey with 3,768 and 3,766 calories respectively.

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