Population pressure induces agricultural intensification, so density can raise productivity rather than only straining it.
Boserup's 1965 argument against Malthus: farmers move to shorter fallow, then to irrigation and multi-cropping, precisely because there are more people to feed. Density supplies both the pressure and the labour.
In practice
- A village with more mouths to feed terraces the hillside it had left alone, and yields per hectare rise.
- A team given more work than the process allows invents a better process, which the previous headcount never needed.
- Standing
- The direct counterweight to the Malthusian trap.
- Subject
- Economics & Incentives
- Essay
- The theories behind every argument about money