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In his "Essay on the Principle of Population," of 1798, the English parson Thomas Malthus insisted that human populations would always be "checked" (a polite word for mass starvation) by the failure of food supplies to keep pace with population growth. For a long time, it looked as if what Malthus called the "dark tints" of his argument were unduly, even absurdly, pessimistic. As Paul Roberts writes in "The End of Food" (Houghton Mifflin; $26), "Until late in the twentieth century, the modern food system was celebrated as a monument to humanity's greatest triumph. We were producing more food--more grain, more meat, more fruits and vegetables--than ever before, more ...