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Thomas Malthus, Ester Boserup, and Agricultural Development Models in the Age of Limits

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Scott Soby at Midwestern University
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Two competing models have served as the basis for agricultural development policies. One is based on observations and assumptions of The Reverend Thomas Malthus in late eighteenth century Britain, and the other from the Danish economist Ester Boserup in the mid-twentieth century. However, rational agricultural development decisions can only be made using a model that incorporates assumptions based on a technically appropriate model that takes into account the currently status of global systems. A new development model may incorporate elements of both Neo-Malthusian and Boserupian economic-demographic models, but because the world has changed substantially, it can be neither of them alone, nor a hybrid of the two models without significant expansion and refinement. The principles espoused by Malthus and Boserup can thus be used as the starting points in a dialectic argument to arrive at a new agricultural development paradigm.
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ARTICLES
Thomas Malthus, Ester Boserup, and Agricultural
Development Models in the Age of Limits
Scott Soby
1
Accepted: 3 February 2017 / Published online: 9 February 2017
Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017
Abstract Two competing models have served as the basis for agricultural devel-
opment policies. One is based on observations and assumptions of The Reverend
Thomas Malthus in late eighteenth century Britain, and the other from the Danish
economist Ester Boserup in the mid-twentieth century. However, rational agricul-
tural development decisions can only be made using a model that incorporates
assumptions based on a technically appropriate model that takes into account the
currently status of global systems. A new development model may incorporate
elements of both Neo-Malthusian and Boserupian economic-demographic models,
but because the world has changed substantially, it can be neither of them alone, nor
a hybrid of the two models without significant expansion and refinement. The
principles espoused by Malthus and Boserup can thus be used as the starting points
in a dialectic argument to arrive at a new agricultural development paradigm.
Keywords Agricultural development Modeling Intensification Malthus
Boserup
Introduction
Despite the massive input of development aid and other resources (Development aid
peaked in 2013 at $136 billion (https://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/documentupload/
ODA%202013%20Tables%20and%20Charts%20En.pdf), agricultural development
has been refractory in much of the underdevelopedworld.While there are manyhuman-
caused and ‘natural’ factors that have played some part in hampering development, there
has been enough failure to warrant a fresh look at the assumptions upon which
&Scott Soby
ssobyx@midwestern.edu
1
Biomedical Sciences, College of Health Sciences, and College of Veterinary Medicine,
Midwestern University, Glendale, AZ 85308, USA
123
J Agric Environ Ethics (2017) 30:87–98
DOI 10.1007/s10806-017-9655-x
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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... Immigration influences population growth consequently leading to high population densities which are associated with LUC (Msofe et al., 2019;Soby, 2017). Similarly, investments and development projects in rural areas done by immigrants expand agricultural landholdings (Soby, 2017). Migrants may not contribute to land use change more than the natives . ...
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