

The methods traditionally developed by the scientists and employed by the farmers have been, without doubt, very good ones. Natural Rubber segment should also take home an important inference from the instance cited above as the same applies to this sector as well.

It was the combined effort of the scientists, who developed new innovations and methods, and the farmers, who employed them, that helped to disprove the postulations of Malthus. The development and employment of new and modern technology to all segments of food production cycle helped the farmers as well since they were able to get a better price for their produce, prompting them to invest more time, efforts and resources into farming. Thus food production was able to keep pace with spurt in population only because of development of new varieties of seeds, more potent fertilisers, better farming techniques, including mechanisation of farming, and improved methods for transportation and storage of food grains. Malthus was proved wrong by the development of technology which helped to produce increased quantities of food grains sufficient to meet the demands of the populations of the times. However, though the world population has increased by more than seven times since then during the next two centuries, the shortage of food that Malthus predicted did not occur. Malthus made this prophesy a few years before the end of the 18th century when the world population was in the range of one billion. The gist of his theory is that unless steps are taken for controlling growth of population, a situation will soon arise wherein adequate food is not available to meet the requirements of the people living on this planet. Thomas Robert Malthus, a demographer and economist of English origin who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries, earned his place in history by postulating the famous theory that while food supply increases in arithmetic progression, population surges forward in geometric progression.
