Economics works!

There has been a lot of doom-mongering recently, to the effect that high food prices are the future for our planet, and that poverty, disease, starvation are what we have to look forward to.

The moaners are followers of Thomas Malthus, the 19th century economist, who decreed that agriculture progresses on an arithmetic scale whilst population increases on a geometric scale and WE ARE ALL DOOMED!

Of course Malthus was proved wrong during the industrial revolution as new farming techniques and mechanisation produced increasing crops from fewer workers. He is still wrong, and whilst we can hardly guess what innovations will take place from the biosciences, we do know that large amounts of agricultural land are unused. In Europe, perhaps the most insane of agricultural schemes worldwide, farmers are paid not to farm land - 'set-aside'.

So it will have come as a shock to the Malthusians, but not to level-headed people, to read this morning that grain prices have fallen dramatically because US farmers have reacted to the new high prices by planting more, just as the law of supply and demand says should happen.