Contrary to Malthus's arguments, human food-producing capacity has increased more rapidly than human population. Yet,...

rolltribe on July 14, 2015

Is the thing that will eventually change that eventually because of a lack of biodiversity the human population will grow larger than our ability to produce food?

Naz on August 6, 2015

So we are told that in contrast to Malthus's arguments, human food-producing capacity has increased more rapidly than human population. This is a fact given to us in the argument.

However, we are also told that agricultural advances usually compromise biological diversity - another fact. Now, since a lack of biological diversity will eventually erode our capacity to produce food (this is clearly our premise since it is leading us to the conclusion), we can conclude that Malthus's prediction that insufficient food will doom humanity to war, pestilence, and famine will likely be proven correct in the future.

Again, our reasoning follows this line: even though human food-producing capacity has increased biological diversity, we know that agricultural advances often compromise biological diversity, and a lack of biological diversity will eventually erode our capacity to produce food. Thus, even though at the moment Malthus's argument is not correct, i.e. human food-producing capacity has increased more rapidly than human population, it will likely be proven correct in the future.

Therefore, the statement that human food-producing capacity has increased more rapidly than human population is a fact that the argument then proceeds to explain will eventually no longer be true, i.e. answer choice (D).

Hope that clears things up! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

djayasinghe on August 27, 2018

This was very helpful thank you