> For most of our history, most humans societies were only barely able to feed themselves. All growth in food supply was quickly matched by population growth.
This, like most clichés isn't strictly wrong, but it's not very true either, at least for agrarian societies. Almost since the beginning of agriculture, agrarian societies have experienced food surpluses, and that's what made the cities appear (as in a pre-industrial society the urban population feeds from the surplus of the countryside). And, at least in Western Europe, until the late middle ages there was a lot woodland completely fit for agriculture[1] that weren't exploited yet, leaving a huge margin for population to grow (and it did in fact, grow). So in most of the history of agriculture, again at least in Western Europe, population wasn't simply linked to the size of the potential food supply. It was probably much truer during the early modern period, when most woodland had been converted (even though the quick adaptation of the British agriculture during the continental blockade showed that there was again quite some margin there).
[1]: we know that they were fit for agriculture, because by the end of the middle ages, they were cultivated.