|
Food Security for a
Growing World Population: 200 Years
After Malthus, Still an Unsolved Problem
- introduction
- world
population continues to increase at record levels
- in search of
food security
- the
political economy of food security
- conclusion
1.
Introduction
While the world has been changing over
the last 25 years politically and economically in unexpected and
remarkable ways, food security remains an unfulfilled dream for
currently more than 800 million people, about 10 percent less than in
1970. What seems to be a small improvement, should not go
unappreciated, however, as about 1.5 billion people were added to the
population of the developing countries since then. There has been
progress on a global scale-but not for all.
Estimates and
Projections of the Incidence of Chronic
Undernutrition in Developing Countries |
| Region |
Year |
Total
Population |
Undernourished |
| |
|
(millions) |
% of
Population |
Millions |
|
| Sub-Saharan |
1969-71 |
268 |
36 |
96 |
| Africa |
1990-92 |
500 |
41 |
204 |
| |
2010 |
874 |
35 |
302 |
| Near East / |
1969-71 |
178 |
25 |
44 |
| North Africa |
1990-92 |
317 |
10 |
32 |
| |
2010 |
513 |
7 |
35 |
| East Asia |
1969-71 |
1,147 |
41 |
468 |
| |
1990-92 |
1,674 |
16 |
262 |
| |
2010 |
2,070 |
5 |
105 |
| South Asia |
1969-71 |
711 |
33 |
233 |
| |
1990-92 |
1,146 |
22 |
250 |
| |
2010 |
1,617 |
15 |
239 |
| Latin America |
1969-71 |
279 |
18 |
51 |
| |
1990-92 |
443 |
14 |
61 |
| |
2010 |
593 |
8 |
49 |
| Total |
1969-71 |
2,583 |
35 |
893 |
| |
1990-92 |
4,064 |
20 |
840 |
| |
2010 |
5,668 |
13 |
680 |
Source:
FAO Food, Agriculture and Food Security: The Global Dimension.
(Document WFS 96/Tech 1), Rome 1996, p.27
|
There are good chances for continuing
progress in the years to come - but, again, not for all and much more
difficult to achieve: During the next 30 years, the increase in
numbers of human beings will be in the same dimension as the total
world population in 1950, i.e. about 2.4. billion people. In the same
period of time the globe's ecological carrying capacity is expected to
shrink. The combination of these two trends will keep food security
200 years after Malthus on the agenda for human development.
2.
World population continues to increase at record levels
Never before in human history has our
planet been so densely populated as today: nearly 5.8 billion people
now live on earth and, even though birthrates are decreasing in most
countries, about 88 million will be added to our numbers in 1996, 98%
of them in developing countries.1 Those of
us born before 1950 are the first generation in human history to
witness a doubling of world population.
While some of the developing
countries are steadily moving toward lower birth and death rates,
others - mainly those with high levels of poverty and limited social
and economic progress for women - are experiencing constant birth
rates at a high level. In the aggregate, the population of the
developing countries - 80 percent of the global total - continues to
increase at record levels: With an increase of 56 million per year,
Asia has the highest absolute growth; with 2.8% population growth per
year, Africa has the steepest rate.
| World Population
1996, 2010 and 2025 (in 1,000) |
| Region |
Years |
| |
1996 |
2010 |
2025 |
|
| World |
5,771,000 |
6,974,000 |
8,193,000 |
| More developed |
1,171,000 |
1,231,000 |
1,268,000 |
| Less developed: |
4,600,000 |
5,743,000 |
6,925,000 |
|
|
732,000 |
1,039,000 |
1,462,000 |
|
|
486,000 |
584,000 |
678,000 |
|
|
3,375,000 |
4,110,000 |
4,772,000 |
Source:
Population Reference Bureau (Ed.):
World Population Data Sheet 1996, Washington, D.C. 1996
|
Because nearly 40 percent of the
people living in developing countries are younger than 15 years, i.e.
still not in what the demographers call reproductive age, the high
absolute population growth will continue into the next century despite
declining birthrates. The present international consensus is that in
the next thirty years the world population will swell to at least 8.2
billion.
For a small number of countries the
challenges of population growth will be particularly daunting:
Selected Countries
Ranked by Population Size:
1996, 2010 and 2025 (in thousands) |
| Country |
1996 |
2010 |
2025 |
|
| China |
1,217,616 |
1,387,000 |
1,492,000 |
| India |
949,592 |
1,182,672 |
1,384,581 |
| Indonesia |
201,425 |
240,619 |
276,526 |
| Nigeria |
103,912 |
161,969 |
246,030 |
| Pakistan |
133,516 |
176,350 |
232,926 |
| Bangladesh |
119,823 |
149,162 |
175,808 |
| Ethiopia |
57,172 |
89,982 |
129,723 |
| Egypt |
63,693 |
80,689 |
97,621 |
Source:
Population Reference Bureau (Ed.):
World Population Data Sheet 1996, Washington, D.C. 1996
|
Already the fact that a significantly
higher number of human beings will have to be provided with food in
adequate quantity and quality poses a number of political, economic,
social, ecological and technological problems. Two salient features of
population growth will make it particularly difficult to achieve
future successes on the food security front:
- The world is becoming more
urbanized, and
- the world is
becoming more polarized, i.e. while the number of people in the
low-income groups is growing faster than world population in
general, the share of income of the rich has been rising
significantly.
2.1. urban population growth
The world, in particular the
developing world, is in the midst of an unprecedented urban
transition. Within the next decade, more than half of the world's
population, an estimated 3.3. billion, will be living in urban
areas.2 As recently as 1975, just over
one-third of the world's population lived in urban areas; by 2025,
only 50 years later, it will be almost two- thirds.
Total Population
Growth and Urban Population
Growth 1950-2025 (in millions) |
| Year |
Total
Population |
Urban
Population |
| |
World |
Developing
Countries |
World |
Developing
Countries |
|
| 1950 |
2,516 |
1,683 |
783
(31%) |
295
(18%) |
| 1970 |
3,697 |
2,648 |
1,353
(37%) |
676
(26%) |
| 1990 |
5,295 |
4,084 |
2,274
(43%) |
1,435
(35%) |
| 2000 |
6,228 |
4,950 |
2,926
(47%) |
2,022
(41%) |
| 2025 |
8,193 |
6,925 |
5,065
(62%) |
4,025
(58%) |
Source:
UN: World Population Prospects, The 1992 Revision, p. 284ff;
for the year 2025:
Population Reference Bureau 1996; for Urban Population: UN:
World Urbanization Prospects,
The 1994 Revision, p.86f
|
The megacities of the future are
increasingly to be found in developing countries, and will confront
them with social and environmental problems of unprecedented
magnitude.3
Population in
Cities with More than 1 Million Residents,
by Region 1950-2015 |
| Total
Population (in millions) of All Cities with More Than 1
Million Residents |
| Region |
1950 |
1970 |
1990 |
2015 |
|
| Africa |
3 |
16 |
59 |
225 |
| Latin America |
17 |
57 |
118 |
225 |
| Asia |
58 |
168 |
359 |
903 |
| North America |
40 |
78 |
105 |
148 |
| Europe |
73 |
116 |
141 |
156 |
Source:
UN Population Division: World Population Prospects; 1994
Revision,
New York 1995, p.14ff
|
In practically no city in poor
countries have public investments in new housing, effluent disposal,
highways, transportation, and other infrastructure basics of
government services kept pace with the urban growth rate of the past
three decades. Some one billion people already live cooped up in
slums; at least 220 million urban dwellers lack access to clean
drinking water; more than 420 million do not have access to the
simplest latrines and other bare essentials of a decent standard of
living. This has notable consequences for the quality of life and
physical security of city dwellers.
As it also does for food security:
Urban populations are not able to feed themselves by subsistence
food production, and their eating patterns differ from those of
rural folk. The amount of high-value, transportable, and storable
grain (such as rice and wheat), animal protein, and vegetables in
their diets is higher, with a corresponding decrease in the
proportion of traditional foodstuffs.
As incomes rise for some urban
professional groups - this is expected to be the case particularly
in the industrializing Asian countries - people move up the food
chain, i.e. consume more livestock products, the production of which
either requires more grain or absorbs arable land.
A comparison of different countries
shows the impact on food demand:
Annual Grain Use
and Consumption of Livestock Products in
Selected Countries, 1990 (in kg per capita) |
| Country |
Grain |
Beef |
Pork |
Poultry |
Milk |
Eggs |
|
| United States |
800 |
42 |
28 |
44 |
271 |
16 |
| Italy |
400 |
16 |
20 |
19 |
182 |
12 |
| China |
300 |
1 |
21 |
3 |
4 |
7 |
| India |
200 |
- |
0.4 |
0.4 |
31 |
13 |
Source:
Brown L.: Who will feed China? Wake-up Call for a Small
Planet. W.W.Norton,
New York 1995, p.45.
|
Already today's 400 million or so
subsistence farmers cannot feed the urban population of 1.5 billion;
the 800 million subsistence farmers of the year 2025 will not
possibly be able to feed 4 billion city dwellers. This means that
future food production will come from a dualistic agriculture. The
subsistence sector will continue to support those living in the
backward areas, while modern agriculture and intensified production
will have to supply the urban dwellers.
While cities grow and a part of the
urban population enjoys increased incomes, overall the world is
becoming more polarized and poorer as the lower-income classes grow
faster than the total population:
2.2. the world is growing poorer
Poverty reduction has been the top
priority of development endeavors over many years. Yet, despite the
fact that significant progress has been made in improving living
standards in almost all developing countries, more than 1.3 billion
people in the developing world still struggle to survive on less
than a dollar a day: they live in absolute poverty.4
Every year nearly 8 million children die from diseases linked to
dirty water and air pollution, 50 million children are mentally or
physically damaged because of inadequate nutrition, and 130 million
children-80 percent of them girls-are denied the chance to go to
school. The shocking fact is that a child born in Sub-Saharan Africa
is still more likely to be malnourished than to go to primary school
and is as likely to die before the age of five as to enter secondary
school.5
Despite substantial increases in
the income of the upper and, in part, the middle classes in nearly
every developing country. the number of people living in poverty is
expected to rise at an above-average rate.
| Population and
Population Growth by Income Groups |
| |
Population
(in millions) |
Share
of World
Population (percent) |
Annual
Increase
(in millions) |
| |
1990 |
2000 |
2025 |
1990 |
2000 |
2025 |
1990/95 |
2000/05 |
|
| World income group: |
5266 |
6114 |
8121 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
85.2 |
85.8 |
|
|
3072 |
3653 |
5060 |
58.3 |
59.3 |
62.3 |
58.4 |
57.2 |
|
|
817 |
866 |
923 |
15.5 |
14.2 |
11.4 |
5.2 |
3.2 |
Source:
Bos E. et al: World Population Projections 1994-95. World
Bank, Washington, D.C., 1994, p.5
|
Up to now, poverty has been mainly
a rural phenomenon, attributable in part to a vicious circle: a lot
of today's degradation of agricultural resources is poverty-related6
- and degraded environmental resources contribute to the
perpetuation of poverty. Yet, although poverty will continue to
characterize the rural landscape, projections show that the number
of urban poor will overtake the number in rural areas by early next
century.7
Relative
poverty has also increased. Over the past 15 years the world has
seen spectacular economic advances for some countries-and
unprecedented decline for others. The gap in per capita income
between the industrial and the developing world tripled from USD
5,700 in 1960 to USD 15,400 in 1993.8
Disparities have grown within
societies as well. To repeat: Today the world is more polarized than
ever before in human history. The poorest 20 percent of the world's
people saw their share of global income decline from 2.4% to 1.4% in
the past 30 years, while the share of the richest 20 percent rose
from 70% to 85%. That doubled the ratio of the shares of the richest
and the poorest - from 30:1 to 61:1.
Distribution of
Income or Consumption
in Selected Countries |
| Country |
Percentage
Share Of
Income Or Consumption |
| |
poorest
10% |
richest
10% |
|
| Tanzania |
2.9 |
30.2 |
| Guinea-Bissau |
0.5 |
42.4 |
| Kenya |
1.2 |
47.7 |
| Nigeria |
1.3 |
31.3 |
| Zimbabwe |
1.8 |
46.9 |
| Guatemala |
0.6 |
46.6 |
| Nicaragua |
1.6 |
39.8 |
USA
(for comparison) |
4.7
(poorest 20 percent) |
25.0
(richest 20 percent) |
Source:
World Bank: World Development Report 1996.
Washington, D.C. pp.196ff
|
While absolute poverty has direct
negative implications for human development, increasing economic
disparities against a background of widespread poverty put the
social fabric at risk. As Robert D. Kaplan has demonstrated
convincingly, a disintegrating social fabric will have grave
consequences not only for the environment, political stability, and
the safeguarding of regional and national tranquillity but also for
food security.9
2.3. the world's agricultural
environment is deteriorating
A last but certainly not least trend
threatening sustainable agricultural development and hence food
security has to do with the widespread effects of human activities
on the environment: On the global level, major key indicators show
that the physical condition of the earth is deteriorating, i.e. the
earth is getting warmer (the 10 warmest years in the last 130 have
all been in the 1980s and 1990s; of those 10, the three warmest were
in the 1990s, with 1995 the record year to date)10.
The deforestation11 of the planet
continues unabated, reducing the capacity of soils and vegetation to
absorb and store water.
Soil erosion by water and wind due
to inappropriate agricultural techniques as well as overuse of
scarce resources12, particularly
overuse of water resources13, make
every effort to improve food security an even more difficult task.
The scale of land degradation is estimated to be very high: The
Global Land Assessment of Degradation (Glasod) estimates that of the
3.2. billion hectares which are under pasture, 21 percent are
degraded, while of the nearly 1.5 billion hectares in cropland, 38
percent are degraded to various degrees.14
Water and wind erosion are the principal causes of degradation.
Various sources suggest that 5 to 10 million hectares of land are
being lost annually to severe degradation. The degradation of
cropland appears to be most extensive in Africa, affecting 65
percent of the cropland area, compared with 51 percent in Latin
America and 38 percent in Asia.15
Declining yields or increasing input requirements will be the
consequence.
The Sahelian Zone in Sub-Saharan
Africa continues to be among the ecologically most endangered
regions of the world16 - with dire
consequences for self-reliance. A number of populous countries
suffer particularly high losses. Each year Indonesia, for example,
loses 20,000 hectares of cropland on Java alone, which is enough to
supply rice to 378,000 people.17 China,
the most populous country in the world, continues to be under heavy
land pressure, with at least uncertain consequences for national
food self-sufficiency.
| Loss of Arable
Land in China, 1987-92 |
| Sources
of Loss |
Area Lost
(1,000ha) |
Share of
China's
Cropland (in %) |
|
| National Capital
Construction |
508 |
0.4 |
| Township and village
Construction |
240 |
0.2 |
| Peasant House Building |
184 |
0.1 |
| Forest Expansion |
833 |
0.6 |
| Pasture Expansion |
552 |
0.4 |
| Unexplained Losses |
4,239 |
3.3 |
| |
| Total Losses |
6,556 |
5.0 |
Source:
Gardner G.: Shrinking Fields: Cropland Loss in a World of
Eight Billion
Worldwatch Paper No.131, Washington, D.C. 1996, p.15.
|
It is against the background of
continuing population growth, accelerated urbanization, increasing
poverty, increased pressure on the social fabric and the environment
that the question of whether food security can be achieved in the
next generation must be posed.
3.
In search of food security
3.1. the concept of "food
security"
The Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations (FAO) defines "food security" as a
state of affairs where all people at all times have access to safe
and nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.18
This means that in order to enjoy food security, there must be on
the one hand a provision of safe, nutritious, and quantitatively and
qualitatively adequate food and, on the other, rich and poor, male
and female, old and young must have access to it.
Food security thus has three
dimensions:19
- Availability of sufficient
quantities of food of appropriate quality, supplied through
domestic production or imports;
- Access by households and
individuals to appropriate foods for a nutritious diet; and
- Optimal uptake of nourishment
thanks to a sustaining diet, clean water and adequate
sanitation, together with health care.
The multi-dimensionality of this
concept allows an overview of both global and national food
security-or insecurity-at the household level among low-income
groups and among individual household members who, because of intra-family
obstacles, suffer from inequitable distribution. As parasitic and
other diseases substantially hamper the metabolism and assimilation
of sustenance taken, individual state of health also figures
significantly in the food security equation.
Because shortfalls in food security
can and do result from various interlinked adverse conditions in a
country's socio-economic system, the only pathway to eventual food
security is sustainable human development. This means breaking the
vicious circle of continuing poverty, environmental deterioration,
and acute institutional deficiencies. To aim for a commensurate food
production volume within the framework of such a development
strategy, adapted to specific local circumstances, is a must.
This said, it is obvious that no
such thing as a magic "silver bullet" for achieving food
security exists. The fact is, there are never simple solutions to
complex problems, and anyone who says otherwise should be met with
scepticism.
3.2. the production issue: can the food
supply meet the increased demand?
There is no doubt that future food
demand will rise significantly. Most experts assume that expanding
populations and the likely changes in eating habits will make a
doubling of food output imperative in the next thirty years.20
Answers to the question of whether this can be achieved hinge on the
assumptions made about trends in population growth, arable land,
cropping intensity, yield growth and other variables.
Depending on the database used and
optimistic or pessimistic expectations with regard to technological
progress, agricultural policy, and other factors, various analyses
come to quite different conclusions concerning the capacity of
developing countries to cover their future food production needs.
For a number of reasons it is vital that as much as possible of
local food demand be met by local food production:
For one thing, in developing
countries agriculture is far more than just a supplier of food. In
most of them it still provides 60 - 80% of all gainful employment.
Agriculture is a source of income not only for rural farm workers
but also for those employed in related trades and small industries.
Further, the pull of working the land has deterred people from
migrating to already overcrowded cities. Rural development cannot
take place without a flourishing agriculture. In the past overall
economic development through the sustained growth of industry and
services has rarely proved possible without the basis of
agricultural growth.
Secondly, agriculture always means
sustaining the landscape and caring about the environment too, in
many cases protecting it against erosion. Moreover, agri-"culture"
is a constituent of the many-faceted cultural patrimony of the
developing countries.
Thirdly, meeting the food
requirements of developing countries on an ongoing basis with
surpluses from industrial countries would hardly be feasible
logistically. A.F. McCalla has calculated that a doubled food demand
will result in an increase in grain consumption (mainly wheat, rice,
and maize) from a present-day 1.9 billion tons to 3.8 billion tons.21
Worldwide trade in these grains now amounts to around 200 million
tons, or about 10% of overall consumption. Even if the needed
surpluses of wheat and maize, for example, could be grown in
industrial nations without detriment to the environment, the problem
of food security would still be far from settled. Increasing trade
volume to the level that would suffice to supply just the 4 billion
city-dwellers in developing countries, together with the attendant
transport and storage facilities and the distribution channels that
would be needed in the importing countries, would present - as far
as one can see today - practically insurmountable problems of
logistics and organisation.
A last argument for the validity of
the assumption that developing countries must produce their food at
home is the fact the availability of foreign exchange to pay for the
necessary imports is expected to remain a major problem for most
poor countries.22 Food aid must be
expected to remain the exception to the rule.
All things considered, food
shipments from industrial countries will most likely continue to be
deployable only in emergencies to bridge acute shortages. On the
question of whether it will be possible to produce food in
developing countries in the quantities required, opinions are
divided.
3.2.1.
Assumptions, valuations and projections
At least since the time of Thomas Malthus, the question of whether
the production challenge for a growing population can be met has
always been a subject of intense controversy. On complex matters
like this, various experts usually argue with different assumptions
and valuations as well as with divergent statistical data, and
accordingly come to different conclusions. Today these still cover
the whole range of expectations, from terrifying neo-Malthusian
scenarios to a soothing "no problem - everything under
control." Since apocalyptic visions always attract more
attention than do positive ones, let us first look at what the
"optimists" have to say.
A. The optimistic view:
Problems? What problems?
For many biologists, agronomists, and economists, the whole debate
about food deficits amounts to groundless panic-mongering and
attention-grabbing gloom and doom clamor. In their view, the current
and medium-term (thirty years) productive capacity of the earth
(land, water, and plant genetic resources, plus the knowledge that
can be mobilized) suffices to feed everyone. They do not anticipate
major climatic changes, at least not for the next thirty to forty
years.
The optimists point out that
warnings of impending food deficits, and indeed fright scenarios
conjuring up mass famine, have been periodically broadcast ever
since the end of World War II. Yet leaving aside human-made famines
caused by wars and civil strife, by and large these dire prophecies
have never come to pass. Malthusian scenarios are rejected by
pointing out (correctly) that in the late eighteenth century Thomas
Malthus completely underestimated the dynamics of technological
progress. For this reason alone he is no longer a credible reference
for the optimists.
Optimists cite three further
arguments in rebuttal of Malthusian fears:
i. Food prices
have not been increasing in real terms until very recently
Since prices normally reflect
scarcities, looming production shortfalls or actual food shortages
should be accompanied by significant price hikes. But the prices
of exported foodstuffs have until 1994 shown a continuous downward
trend for many years. Export prices in U.S. dollars of grain,
meat, dairy products, and sugar have never been as low as they
were in 1994. The fact that the situation has changed dramatically
over the past 18 months and that wheat prices halved reached the
highest level in history in April 1996 - double the price than a
year earlier is acknowledged by the optimists. It is, however,
seen as a temporary deviation from the long-term trend - an point
of view which is strongly challenged by Lester Brown and his staff
at the Worldwatch Institute.23
Statements about prices have to
be qualified in two respects. First, present-day agricultural
prices do not tell the "ecological truth" - they do not
reflect the costs to the environment of modern intensive farming,
such as the strain on water resources, soil erosion, or reduced
biodiversity. Were these costs to be "internalized", the
result would be higher prices and probably diminished production
volumes as well. Part of the recent price rise might be an
indication that ecological constraints to agricultural production
start to be felt.
A second, political element tends
to keep (national) prices of agricultural products in many
industrialized countries high (and - to please the urban dwellers
- in many developing countries artificially low). Government
interventions in the form of hidden and open subsidies or
guaranteed minimum prices make foodstuffs considerably more
expensive than would be the case in unregulated markets. If these
supports were withdrawn, the (national) prices would probably fall
and, as a consequence, an important production stimulus would
vanish. The reduced production volume and the internalization of
ecological costs could lead to higher prices at a later date. As
at the same time, export prices of surplus production from
industrialized countries are subsidized, these prices would rise
too - stimulating local production in hitherto food importing
developing countries. It is hard to say whether these
contradictory influences bring about a net price reduction or
increase on the international markets.
A second argument of the
optimists is that;
ii. Available
calories and food production per capita are on the rise
According to FAO, the available
calories per capita rose in the developing countries from 1,960 in
the early sixties to 2,520 in the early nineties - an increase of
29% - even though the population almost doubled during the same
period. Tempering this global improvement, though, were regional
stagnations and regressions, and various regions showed
considerably less progress. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged clearly
behind other developing regions.
Per Capita
Food Supplies for Direct
Human Consumption (in calories per day) |
| Region |
1961-63 |
1990-92 |
2010 |
|
| Developing Countries |
1960 |
2520 |
2730 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa |
2100 |
2040 |
2170 |
| East Asia |
1750 |
2670 |
3040 |
| South Asia |
2030 |
2300 |
2450 |
| Industrial Countries |
3020 |
3330 |
3470 |
| World |
2300 |
2710 |
2860 |
Source:
Alexandratos N. /FAO (Eds): World Agriculture:
Towards 2010. (FAO), Rome 1995, p.83ff.
|
Food supply can come from local
production and imported food as well as Food Aid. Part of the
positive picture of the per capita food supply - notably in
Sub-Saharan Africa - is not reflected in a growth of local per
capita production:
Food
Production per capita,
Indices per Regions (1979-81 = 100) |
| Region |
1979-81 |
1985 |
1994 |
|
| World |
100 |
104 |
103 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa |
100 |
96 |
95 |
| South America |
100 |
103 |
111 |
| Asia |
100 |
111 |
129 |
Source:
FAO (Ed.): Production Yearbook
Vol.48 (1994), Rome, 1995, Table 4, p.39.
|
iii. Other
sources of optimism
Those who discern no insuperable
barriers to securing the world food supply advance a further line
of argument: the reforms in agricultural policy that may be
expected in developing countries:
Producers' prices there have been
kept artificially low for many years by way of administrative
interventions in order to appease the urban elites. Farmers thus
have no incentive - and lack the necessary inputs - to increase
their productivity using modern techniques and to grow surpluses
for the market. If governments stopped intervening, prices could
be expected to go up in many countries. Growers would then have an
inducement to produce more for the market. The example of China
since the late seventies shows how impressive such a response can
be.
Finally, landholding and tenancy
reforms in many countries, together with the securing of ownership
rights to arable land, would bring a further stimulus to investing
in sustainable productivity increases. Reforms of this nature
could also lead to expanded production for export in the former
communist countries of Europe, significantly augmenting supplies
on the world market. For the countries of the South, however, such
a development would bring about unwanted pressure on the prices of
their products.
All in all, the optimists
conclude that in principle no obstacles exist to ensuring a
sufficient world food supply over the next fifteen to twenty
years. True, they concede that some regions and various countries
that have known famine in the past may have problems in future,
too. Yet on the whole such slight deficits as might be felt in
developing countries could be offset without great difficulty by
increasing exports somewhat.
B. The pessimists:
malthusian perspectives
A number of facts conspire to conjure up the specter of a
frightening scenario thought to have been long since surmounted -
the scenario with which Thomas Malthus startled his contemporaries
almost 200 years ago. Since the mid-eighties, after more than thirty
years of growth in the world's food output, the trend has reversed.
In a 1994 analysis, Lester Brown and Hal Kane of the Worldwatch
Institute conclude that in the case of grain, for example, a 12% per
capita decline took place between 1984 and 1993, and that since the
beginning of the nineties the gap between demand and supply has been
widening.24 In 1996 grain stocks
dropped to an all-time low.25
The pessimists draw attention to
the fact that the natural resources available for food production
are shrinking, while world population goes on increasing by several
hundred million every decade. Now and in the years ahead, some
250,000 people will be added to it each day, while the natural
resources needed to feed them diminish daily. The World Resources
Institute estimates that since World War II, 1.2. billion hectares -
equivalent to about 10.5% of the world's agricultural land, or to
the combined area of China and India - have been impaired as a
consequence of human activity.26 The
greatest damage has occurred in China (450 million hectares),
followed by Africa (320 million hectares). In Asia, ongoing
urbanization and industrialization will reduce arable land per
capita from today's 0.15 hectares to only 0.09 hectares by 2025. In
the wake of its drive to industrialize, China alone is losing a
million hectares of arable land yearly.27
Added to the erosion and overuse of
agricultural land are dramatically increasing water shortages in
densely populated regions critical for securing the world food
supply. Wherever forests are exploited beyond their capacity to
regenerate themselves, water shortages and erosion are accelerated.28
Year after year we are losing some 17 million hectares of forests,
more than two-thirds of which is converted to unsustainable
agricultural purposes. Mainly as a result of this destruction, a
multitude of plant and animal species is dying out - an
unquantifiable and irrevocable loss.29
And finally, even the last remaining food reservoir, once believed
boundless, is nearing exhaustion. Fish catches in international
waters have reached their limits and are stagnating worldwide, if
not declining.30
Where poverty is particularly acute
and population pressure particularly strong, intensified agriculture
goes hand in hand with overuse, leading in turn to substantial
environmental degradation. Although it is very difficult to quantify
the direct impact of soil erosion, salination, or loss of humus on
food production, there is no doubt that future production increases
through intensified cultivation will prove viable only if they do
not downgrade the environment.
Yield increases in important
production areas such as Asia are already recessive. In the areas of
highest productivity, such as the Punjab, increasing water
shortages, salination, and bleaching out present enormous problems.
Last, the technological gap between high-production areas and others
is growing smaller and smaller; new technological quantum leaps are
not in sight.
Gravest of all, in the pessimists'
view, is the failure of most estimates of future food security in
developing countries to factor in governance. On the contrary, they
usually postulate an "intact world" in which governments
do the best they can to maximize the long-term public welfare. This
assumption is in glaring contrast to present-day reality, however.
In practically every developing
country agriculture continues to be grievously neglected, even
though in most of them, as noted, it still creates 60 - 80% of all
jobs, provides low-priced foodstuffs, and earns valuable foreign
exchange through the production of export goods such as coffee and
cotton. The neglect comes out clearly in the proportion of
government investment in developing countries budgeted for
agriculture-in most cases it declined steadily over the last 20
years.31
Much more ominous, however, is the
syndrome characterized by lawlessness, tribalism, corruption, and
other forms of social disintegration that is giving rise in many
countries to anarchy, civil wars, and other kinds of violent strife.
In Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Liberia, Mozambique, or Angola, in
Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia, people are going hungry not
because of a scarcity of natural resources but because statecraft is
missing and - as a dreadful outcome of history - there is a
breakdown of social cohesion.
When the spiral of deteriorating
environment, social disintegration, and poverty crisis ends in
unrest or even in conflicts and civil wars, food security cannot be
achieved. Visions such as the one Robert Kaplan has called "The
Coming Anarchy" should not be ruled out when discussing
strategies for securing an adequate food supply. The best
agricultural research, the highest-yielding seed varieties, even
quantum leaps of all input factors will avail us nothing if the
social and political fabric is hostile to development.
Yet even if the political climate
were more auspicious, it would be fruitless to attempt to solve the
problems of the future using methods applied in the past. It is
sobering to look back at the achievements of the sixties and
seventies. A doubling of food production over thirty years would
require continuing increases at a high absolute level that has never
been attained in human history. After the initial successes in
boosting yields under the aegis of the Green Revolution (a
technological packet comprising high-yielding varieties,
fertilizers, irrigation, and plant protection), farmers have never
even come near matching the growth rates first recorded.
Natural conditions in the former
model regions of the Green Revolution are far less favorable today
than in the early sixties. Then the pressure on arable land was
nowhere near as great as it is now; several countries had additional
fertile soils and good irrigation possibilities to draw on. For Asia
at least, but also for important regions of Africa, the tough
challenge today is to double food production on the arable land now
available while preserving, or if possible improving, the natural
resource base.
Finally, the pessimists point to
FAO analyses that assume that even under favorable circumstances,
many developing countries that were previously agricultural net
exporters will have become net importers by 2010, at a time of
continuing acute shortage of foreign currency - notably in
Sub-Saharan Africa. Peter Hazell has calculated that in 2000
Africa's grain production shortfall will amount to around 50 million
tons.32 At today's low prices - for
wheat, for example - the food shipments needed to offset that
deficit would cost about USD 7.5 billion, or ten times what Africa
now receives in development aid.
C. What can we
realistically expect?
There is no doubt, that something has happened over the last 12
months: The combination of water scarcity, changing climate,
deteriorating soils and continuing population growth have pulled the
world´s carryover grain stocks down to their lowest levels ever and
contributed to the rise in wheat and corn prices to unimaginable
highs.33 And there is no doubt, that
due to that same combination it will be more difficult to achieve a
sufficient food production in future than at present.
If we look at possible ways of
raising food crop production, the three main sources of the future
will be the same as in the past:
- the arable land and possibly
irrigation will have to be increased
- the proportion of the arable
land that is harvested will have to rise (cropping intensity),
and
- the yields from each unit of
land harvested must be increased by intensifying production
With respect to all of these
elements, the assessments that serve as input for the World Food
Summit 1996 present an optimistic picture:
i. Arable land
FAO foresees an expansion of (rainfed
and irrigated) land in crop production of over 90 million hectares
in the next 15 years-mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa and in Latin
America.34 Here again we need to
differentiate: while some developing countries still have
substantial land reserves for expanding acreage, others have
already used up their fertile land capital. Asian countries,
especially the most populous ones, have only slight possibilities
of expanding acreage. They will have to increase production
through intensified land use (for example, through irrigation) and
the adoption of seed varieties with higher yield potentials.
As the productivity of irrigated
land is significantly higher than that of rainfed land-at present,
almost one-third of the world's food is grown on the 17% of the
world's land that is irrigated - irrigation will remain of special
importance in future. The potential for increasing the overall
irrigated area in the developing countries is at 110 million
hectares (59%), considerable. This could provide an additional 300
- 400 million tons of grain, enough to provide a basic diet for
more than 1.5 billion people.35 As,
however, the necessary investment - an estimated 500 million to 1
billion US dollars - is of an order of magnitude that cannot be
financed by poor countries, and as water scarcity and other
ecological impediments will slow the pace of such investments, the
expansion of irrigated land will probably proceed at a much slower
pace than in the past-about 23 million hectares.
ii. Cropping
intensity
Cropping intensity will escalate,
on the one hand with the change-over from shifting cultivation to
settled agriculture, and on the other with multiple harvests made
possible by modern seed varieties and irrigation.
Arable
land-in-use. Cropping intensity and harvested land
in developing countries (excl. China) |
| Region |
Year |
Total
land-in-use (million hectares) |
Irrigated |
| |
|
Arable |
Cropping |
Harvested |
|
| |
|
(mil
ha) |
intensity
(%) |
(mil
ha) |
(mil
ha) |
|
Sub-Saharan
Africa |
1988-90
2010 |
212.5
254.7 |
55
62 |
117.7
158.1 |
5.3
7.0 |
Near East /
North Africa |
1988-90
2010 |
76.5
80.5 |
83
93 |
63.4
74.8 |
20.1
22.7 |
| East Asia |
1988-90
2010 |
87.5
102.8 |
101
105 |
88.8
108.4 |
19.3
21.5 |
| South Asia |
1988-90
2010 |
190.5
194.9 |
112
122 |
213.0
237.0 |
63.4
76.3 |
| Latin America |
1988-90
2010 |
189.6
216.8 |
61
67 |
115.6
145.0 |
15.0
18.3 |
Developing
Countries |
1988-90
2010 |
756.7
849.7 |
79
85 |
598.5
723.3 |
123.0
145.9 |
Source:
FAO: Food, Agriculture and Food Security: The Global
Dimension
(Document WFS 96/Tech/1), Rome 1995, p.30
|
iii. Yield
increases
Yield increases have been the
most important source of expanded production increase over the
past 20 years and will remain so in future. One can illustrate
this with an example described by Norman Borlaug, the
"Father" of the Green Revolution and a Nobel Prize
Laureate. In 1991 - 93, India produced an average 196 million tons
of grain a year, with an average yield of 1.98 tons per hectare.
In 1961 - 63, the yield figure stood at 0.95 tons per hectare. If
India were still using in the nineties the technology of the
sixties, 208 million hectares of arable land would have been
needed - 116 million more hectares than were available in 1961 -
63. In other words, if the yield per hectare had not doubled,
achieving the results actually recorded in 1991 - 93 would have
required doubling the land under cultivation - an impossibility.
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)
has calculated for various crops the share of production growth
that was due to intensified cultivation in 1974 - 94: sorghum,
100%; rice, 81%, wheat, 80%; maize, 77%; potatoes, 37%; cassava,
36%; and millet, none.36
As there seems to be a consensus
that the scope for raising yield ceilings significantly through
the introduction of new varieties is more limited now than it was
in the past, major increases in food production are seen to come
mainly from the higher-potential agricultural areas.37
These include many industrialized countries, which will continue
to respond to growing demand with expanded production. Critical
progress will have to be achieved in all developing countries
where the natural resources land, water and climate offer the base
for a sustainable increase in food crop production. There, the
potential for increased yields is considerably greater than in the
industrial world. Grain yields per hectare are only half as high
in developing countries as in Europe; in Sub-Saharan Africa, they
are more like one-tenth as high..
As resources are dwindling,
securing the world's food supply in the next decades is going to
depend crucially on yield-increasing innovations. A number of
signs point to the great importance of biotechnology and gene
technology in increasing future yields.38
Quantum jumps like those achieved through the Green Revolution,
are less likely in future, but FAO experts see the potential still
to be high, attainable mainly by closing the gap between the
countries with the highest and the lowest yields and the yield gap
within countries:
| Yield
Development for Major Crops in Developing Countries |
| Crop |
Yield
Growth (tons per hectare) |
Yield
growth in % p.a |
| |
1969-71 |
1988-90 |
2010 |
1970-90 |
1988/90-2010 |
|
| Wheat |
1.2 |
1.9 |
2.7 |
2.8 |
1.6 |
| Rice (paddy) |
1.9 |
2.8 |
3.8 |
2.3 |
1.5 |
| Maize |
1.3 |
1.8 |
2.5 |
1.8 |
1.5 |
| Total Cereals |
1.3 |
1.9 |
2.6 |
2.2 |
1.4 |
| Cassava |
8.3 |
10.1 |
12.2 |
1.1 |
0.9 |
| Pulses |
0.5 |
0.6 |
0.8 |
0.6 |
1.5 |
| Soybeans |
1. |
1.7 |
2.4 |
2.1 |
1.7 |
Source:
FAO: Food, Agriculture and Food Security: The Global
Dimension
(Document WFS 96/Tech/1), Rome 1995, p.31.
|
China offers an example of
impressive yield improvements. Average annual yields gains for
grains and tubers during the last 28 years were always positive,
ranging from 40 kilograms to 140 kilograms per hectare per year.39
It goes without saying that future yield increases will not come
about unless agricultural research efforts continue unabated. Such
research should not only be biological but also contribute to the
improved use and management of all inputs. Considering the
challenges to be met, more public agricultural research will be
necessary-research oriented on the small farmers' needs and on the
fact that there is a limited carrying capacity. Also another
unfortunate trend will have to be reversed: Official development
assistance for agricultural development has declined in real terms
in recent years.40
But all in all and without
running too high a risk, one can conclude that mainstream thinking
- which I consider to be the "realists" anticipates no
major obstacle to producing sufficient quantities of food for a
growing world population, at least over the next 25 or so years.
But what about food security?
4.
The political economy of food security
Food insecurity is one of the most
terrible manifestations of human deprivation and is inextricably
linked to every other facet of the development predicament.41
Poverty is the root cause of chronic hunger; wherever poverty
decreased, hunger decreased.42 In the
words of the World Food Summit: Poverty is one of the major causes of
food insecurity and sustainable progress in poverty alleviation is
critical to improved access to food.43
Poverty is linked not only to poor national economic performance but
also to a political structure that renders the poor people powerless.
So policy matters of a general nature, and in particular good
governance,44 are of overriding
importance for food security. The details of an appropriate
development strategy will vary from country to country, but the
following prerequisites apply in most cases.
The main precondition for food
security is a constructive political leadership that is responsive and
responsible to the people and uses peaceful means in dealing with both
internal conflicts and other governments. Secondly, progress for food
security requires a proper macro-economic framework. These elements
have been most important for successes on the poverty front:45
- Economic growth with a tendency to
rely heavily on labor as the most plentiful factor of production
as well as active distributional policies, i.e. economic
development that lifts all boats in a society and not only those
of the elites. Successes have been greatest where endeavors to
close the gap between the rich and the poor were effective without
unduly reducing the incentives to the rich to be productive.
- Sound socio-economic policy, i.e.
avoiding high inflation, overvalued currencies and allocating
limited resources to managing those affairs that markets cannot
handle well yet are essential for the efficient functioning of the
economy and society.
- Strong support for basic needs
strategies, i.e. a development approach that puts priority on
meeting the needs for education, health services and other
essentials for all people in a country.46
The "Lessons of East Asia" show that government
interventions in the interest of equity are not only compatible
with economic growth but make it more sustainable.47
- Massive investment in rural
infrastructure, e.g. roads, markets, electricity, irrigation,
agricultural extension services etc., and
- Low taxation of agriculture.
Furthermore it is obvious that any
and all efforts to reduce population growth in an ethically acceptable
way constitute a critical pillar of future food security.48
Given that the majority of poor
people is still to be found in rural areas, labor-intensive rural and
agricultural development strategies which increase the productivity
and effectiveness of the rural population and hence the agricultural
sector while being sustainable in the social and environmental sense
would be the ideal. As landlessness and near landlessness together
with unemployment and underemployment are the prime determinants of
food insecurity in rural areas, land and tenancy reforms as well as
Grameen-type credit schemes and institutional support for
diversification are of additional importance. Also of great importance
is the prevention of the still considerable pre- and postharvest
losses caused by weeds, plant diseases, animal pests, and inadequate
storage.49
5.
Conclusion
Food security for a growing world
remains an unsolved problem also 200 years after Malthus. But we can
realistically expect food security to be improved for an increasing
number of people if sustained social and political reforms in the
countries with deficits in food security are implemented. They can
lead to economic development that will also benefit the lower strata
of the poor nations.
As there are no technical solutions
to social and political problems, new agricultural technologies can
only contribute one stone to a complex mosaic. But without
yield-increasing innovations world food security will not be
attainable. Because deficits in food security stem from the combined
effects of factors such as poverty, low levels of food production, and
diminishing environmental quality, the best way to deal with the
challenge lies in strategies that tackle all problems comprehensively,
i.e. transforming local agricultures into a sector that generates
employment and income for the rural people, stimulates the non-farm
sector and the overall economy, and increases food supply.50
What, however, ought to be from a normative standpoint will not
necessarily be what is going to happen in the real political world of
the poor nations.
The next 25 years will be decisive in
many respects, environmentally, demographically and with regard to
economic development. There is still time - and there is the knowledge
as well as the financial resources - to reverse the social and
ecological trends that threaten food security and hence political and
social stability in the developing world. Good Governance, so the
conference concluded, will be one of the most important preconditions
for successful endeavours to attain food security. As the »conference«
consisted of heads of states, prime ministers, ministers for
agriculture and other important national representatives - with other
words, those, who are in charge of good governance in the respective
countries - it remains to be hoped, that the World Food Summit is more
than just another political event proclaiming another Action Plan - to
be forgotten before the delegations arrive back home.
Prof.
Dr. Klaus M. Leisinger's contribution to the
Saguf-Symposium, "How will the future world population feed
itself?" Zürich, October 9 - 10 , 1996.
Additional information
references
1All
statistical data are taken from Population Reference Bureau (Ed.):
World Population Data Sheet 1996. Washington, D.C. 1996.
2See United Nations Population Division:
World Urbanization Prospects: the 1994 Revision, New York 1995, p.87
3See World Resources Institute/United
Nations Environment Programme/ United Nations Development Programme/
World Bank: World Resources 1996-97. A Guide to the Global
Environment. The Urban Environment. Oxford University Press, New
York 1996, p.1ff.
4See World Bank: Poverty Reduction and
the World Bank. Progress and Challenges in the 1990s. Washington,
D.C.1996, p.vii.
5World Bank: Poverty Reduction and the
World Bank. Progress and Challenges in the 1990s. Washington,
D.C.1996, p.vii.
6See Leisinger
K.M./ Schmitt
K.M. / ISNAR (Eds.): Survival
in the Sahel. An ecological and developmental challenge. The
Hague (ISNAR) 199 |