Against the grain

With world grain production breaking all-time records yet again this year it is worth recalling the Malthusian disasters predicted by that irrepressible doomster Paul Ehrlich. Writing in his comfortable office in California’s Stanford University he produced The Population Bomb in 1968, consigning hundreds of millions to starvation in the next decade.

That such a prediction now seems absurd was down to the agronomist Norman Borlaug, who was out in the Third World creating his Green Revolution.

Mexico had already become a net wheat exporter, the Philippines became a rice exporter in 1968 and by 1970 India and Pakistan had doubled their wheat production and become net exporters.

Famine isn’t caused by overpopulationasehrlichclaimed. It’s not even the necessary consequence of drought. Political unrest creates famine.

The other great factors in this happy outcome have been the genetic modification of plants and, to the annoyance of misanthropic greens everywhere, global warming and the increase in growth-boosting CO2. (REV DR) JOHN CAMERON

Howard Place,st Andrews