Thomas Malthus’ theories on population and food production, though often dismissed today, remain strikingly relevant. RW Johnson delves into Malthus’ predictions and their implications, particularly in the South African context.
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By RW Johnson  ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Thomas Malthus became famous for his Essay on the Principles of Population (1798) which argued that population growth was bound to outrun available food supplies. This was so because land is a finite resource and can only be increased by bringing more marginal land under cultivation – let us say that happens at a rate of 5 per cent a year. But human population can grow exponentially as all the members of (then) large families themselves have large families. Thus a perfectly ordinary Victorian family might have seven children. If that model was followed there would be a progression: 7, 49, 343…..
Malthus’s ideas were quickly embraced as the new orthodoxy but in more recent time Malthus has been regarded as a false prophet because the enormous increase in agricultural yields produced by new scientific farming methods completely falsified his prediction.
In fact it was not as simple as that. Malthus was writing near the start of the industrial revolution and up until then land was the only source of wealth – and of production. It was also an age of discovery and colonisation: the British Empire was growing fast. Malthus was extremely aware of this – and of the fact that in many of Britain’s colonies the indigenous people had still not established settled agriculture but lived by hunting, gathering, herding and fishing. In Britain more and more of the land had been enclosed by private farmers, thus increasing agricultural output – and British colonial administrators saw it as their duty to do much the same in the colonies, establishing crops both for consumption and export.
The historians of the period believed that civilisation had begun in the Fertile Crescent because that was where the first settled agriculture had been born. Indeed, to a considerable extent having a proper civilisation was regarded as synonymous with having a settled agriculture. Everything before that belonged to the primitive Stone Age, hunter-gatherer societies. Such people rubbed along loosely together but built no cities, usually had no written language or developed culture and thus really didn’t qualify as a civilisation. And because their food production could never keep up with their population increase they frequently had extra ways of disposing of surplus population: incessant tribal warfare, cannibalism, human sacrifice etc
In those days it was assumed that to be civilised people had to be literate, to build cities and to have a high culture. Today a much broader notion of “civilisation” is more usual. But the colonial era was based on this earlier understanding of “civilisation”. So one of the great missions of colonialism was agricultural improvement, albeit often mainly for the benefit of the coloniser.
Today Malthusian thinking is denounced – but it is far from dead. Most societies are anxious about their food security. Only a few societies are large food exporters and most rely on imported food at least to some extent. This is why some wealthy countries are still grabbing land where they can – most of all in the vast African grasslands which are the largest under-used agricultural lands on the planet. With another 2.5 billion mouths to feed by 2050 the world is going to need to a lot more land to be turned into settled agriculture.
South Africa needs to think hard about this. African populists love railing against colonialism but it is, of course, directly due to “settler colonialism” that South Africa is able to (more or less) feed itself and earn foreign exchange abroad thanks to its food exports. Thanks to its impressive private farmers South Africa is the most agriculturally productive country in Africa – though this was achieved at a dreadful cost to local Africans who lost much of their land. However, the effect of post-1994 land reform has been to take over many productive farms and – since 90% of the new farms fail – to leave them as wrecks, growing only weeds. So the area of productive land has been decreasing while the population increases. You only need to extrapolate these trends to see that we could be headed for serious trouble.
On top of that climate change is causing more drought conditions, exacerbated, of course, by this government’s tragic mismanagement of water resources. Already climate change has caused some decline in crop yields and the outlook is for that to continue. In addition, as failing water systems in ANC-ruled cities cause increasing political ructions the government will be tempted to increase water supplies to the cities concerned – at the expense of farmers. Already South Africa has become a significant importer of food and food ingredients from the USA, Brazil and France. We are sliding at speed into becoming a net food importer.
What this all points to is the necessity that Malthus would point to – the need to bring more unproductive land into the modern, commercial high-productivity sector. In South Africa that sounds to many ears like a recommendation to hand over more African-owned land to white commercial farmers. But that need not be so. Indeed, for all our sakes we need more black farmers who are productive and successful. One of the problems with the current land reform process is that the new black farmers are often people eager to try their hand but without any agricultural training or education. Typically they throw themselves on the mercies of neighbouring (or departing) white farmers and plead for help. They often get that for a few years but once it stops, they fail.
This is hopeless. Modern farming is a highly skilled and technical business. Botswana has shown the right way, setting up the Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (BUAN) which produces a steady flow of really capable young black farmers. South Africa does have a number of agricultural colleges but there is a disconnect: almost none of the new black farmers go there. The government needs to award more bursaries for study there. We need to produce far fewer labour law, theology and general arts graduates and more people with technical and vocational skills. Then those graduates need to work for several years in farm management before finally becoming farmers. In addition, of course, new farmers need to have freehold rights so they can borrow against the value of their land.
However, such people will seldom have the capital to buy land. The solution is to hand them parcels of what is now tribal land (which would accordingly be cheap) and gradually to bring into real production land which is currently used only for subsistence. Such farmers will need official assistance as they battle against the dreadful soil erosion which has been allowed to ruin much of this land. We could gradually hope to see a whole new class of small black commercial farmers, particularly in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. This would help the land recover, help feed the cities and it would increase agricultural exports.
Why is something like that unacceptable to the ANC ? Because, of course, tribal land is distributed by the traditional chiefs and that is the basis of their power. They would resist such a change with everything they had. And as the ANC vote has shrunk, it has become increasingly dependent on its rural vote. In the 2024 elections the ANC scored over 50% of the provincial vote only in Limpopo, the Eastern Cape, the Free State, Mpumalanga and the North-West – all rural provinces. And even there their vote fell heavily. As the crisis of the ANC-ruled metros worsens, the ANC is likely to lose its hold in the big cities altogether. So the ANC is ever-more dependent on the rural vote, which in turn means that they are dependent on the support of the chiefs, whom they pay, flatter and bribe (there was a major distribution of new vehicles to the chiefs just before the 2024 election).
It is remarkable how a radical liberation movement like the ANC has rapidly become dependent on the most backward elements of rural society. Every year the proportion of the population that is urbanized grows and the significance of the chiefs shrinks. Yet the ANC is headed in the opposite direction. And what is true of the ANC is even more true of the MKP which wants to double the annual grant to the Zulu King and to replace our present Upper House with a house of African kings, queens and chiefs.
The ANC’s dependence on the chiefs to shepherd and bully voters to “vote the right way” shows how far it has sunk. But it is very striking that even the radicals – notionally to the ANC’s left – are actually a lobby for traditional chiefs. It is striking, too, how notions of authority derive not from democratic norms but chiefly ones. Jacob Zuma, for one, has made it clear that the MKP will have no elective conference and that he alone will take all decisions. There is no provision for anyone to try and change the leader or elect a new one. Instead, Zuma has turned himself into an authoritarian Zulu chief.
And the EFF is the same. Malema rules the party with a rod of iron and his members are all very scared of him. Although the EFF does have an elective conference it is already announced that Malema will continue as leader – more or less indefinitely. It would be surprising if he was even challenged for that role – and no challenger would have a future in that party. Again, Malema is clearly an authoritarian chief, not a party leader in the normal sense.
So, for the moment the move to convert more land to productive commercial agriculture is blocked by the chiefs. But South Africa will continue to urbanize and the population will grow. In the end the choice may come down to cutting back the powers of the chiefs or having more and more people go hungry. And that is really no choice at all.
Read also:
- COP29: Shifting tides and climate fallacies – Andrew Kenny
- Climate change boosts tick populations and disease risks: Lara Williams
- Climate change risk is raising South Africans’ insurance premiums
