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Ester Boserup




Boserup's most notable work is ''The Conditions of Agricultural Growth'' (1965, ISBN 0415312981). This book presented a "dynamic analysis embracing all types of primitive Agriculture ." In doing so, she upended the assumption dating back to Malthus’s time (and still held in many quarters) that agricultural methods determine population (via food supply). Instead, she shows that population determines agricultural methods. A major point of her book is that "necessity is the mother of invention".

She argued that when population density is low enough to allow it, land tends to be used
intermittently, with heavy reliance on fire to clear fields and fallowing to restore fertility (often called ".

The theory has been instrumental in understanding agricultural patterns in Developing Countries , although it is highly simplified and generalized.


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