Yes. Don't listen to them. The problem isn't population. It is distribution. We overproduce for the sake of capitalism to such an extent that we can cut it in half tomorrow and our quality of life would not change in the slightest.

We have alternatives available. We simply do not use them because those who control the world economies would not be able to make obscene profits from it and it necessitates them giving up their ownership over the means of production in order to facilitate these collectively beneficial alternatives.

My understanding is the food production excess is "thanks" to unsustainable, damaging methods that rely heavily on synthetic fertilizer and have massive downsides like agricultural runoff and topsoil erosion (in addition to the wide-scale habitat loss required for those acres upon acres of farmland).

we could also make our food production a gazillion times more efficient if we stopped raising livestock and growing things only to turn them into cattle feed and tractor fuel/corn syrup (granted corn syrup is food, but personally i'd prefer to subsist on the actual raw corn over bottles or syrup)