Explanation:

In his 1798 work, An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus examined the relationship between population growth and resources. From this, he developed the Malthusian theory of population growth in which he wrote that population growth occurs exponentially, so it increases according to birth rate. On the other hand, food production increases arithmetically (linear), so it only increases at given points in time. Malthus wrote that, left unchecked, populations can outgrow their resources. Hence option (a) is the correct answer.