Arable Land Per Capita is Declining

Economics is sometimes called the dismal science because of a hypothesis by a political economists called Malthus. He argued that the food supply was growing in a linear fashion and that population was growing geometrically. Therefore, he claimed that famine would be the method by population was held in check.

This graph tells a different story but it has a similar twist. Arable land per capita is falling in major agricultural regions. The response has been to increase the use of fertilizers to get more yield per acre. The stocks of fertilizer producers has been moving up in response.