Overpopulation isn't really a problem because whenever the quality of life goes up the birth rates go down- drastically. Take Japan or Korea for instance. Japan used to have riots because of a shortage of rice due to overpopulation during the late 18th century and early 19th (around the setting of the
Last Samurai) but now in 21th cent. Gundam Japan, they fear their economy would shrink because kids aren't interested enough in raising a family aka lower birth rates. Korea's population grew from 10 million to 80~ million (North and South combined) in the course of 6 decades but now we're having the same fears as Japan, and because of the simple economics of raising a child within our competitive, "rat race" society. Who wants to raise a child when there's all this education and trends and extracurriculars kids have to master these days?
Although the social and pure population dynamics of these countries differ (India vs Japan multi-ethnic vs homogeneous e.g.), stats consistent shows that once female literacy rates rise, birthrates go drastically down, and even more so when capitalistic forces start forcing people to buy unnecessary things to keep the economy cycling, which would hinder child rearing. I'm also sure there are government initiatives if that keep a 'one girl one boy' in a family to be attractive, like what Korea has done, and even China I believe.
Oh interesting fact about China... their male to female ratio is somewhat skewed to men (which in Chinese statistic terms means a shite ton of people), so there's basically a slight slow down of birth rates simply due to that factor alone.
Also I really do not understand why people are talking about food scarcity when we routinely burn/throwaway/foodaidto3rdworldnations excess food just to keep the agriculture industry happy and running smoothly. The US government made
cheese famous because they had a huge excess of milk during the 80 or something.
Even now they're having cheese problems.
You could say the same thing for rice too. Korea and Japan do not allow trading of rice with China or the US because they could flood the markets here because of their extremely high quantity and ruin the indigenous markets here. Food scarcity is and probably will never be a problem. The problem would most likely have to do with agriculture unions and the economics behinds those industries, not the amount of food itself.