POPULATION AND WORLD FOOD
SUPPLIES
Rapid population growth and lagging food production in developing
countries, together with the sharp deterioration in the global food
situation in 1972 and 1973, have raised serious concerns about the
ability of the world to feed itself adequately over the next quarter
century and beyond.
As a result of population growth, and to some extent also of
increasing affluence, world food demand has been growing at
unprecedented rates. In 1900, the annual increase in world demand
for cereals was about 4 million tons. By 1950, it had risen to about
12 million tons per year. By 1970, the annual increase in demand was
30 million tons (on a base of over 1,200 million tons). This is
roughly equivalent to the annual wheat crop of Canada, Australia,
and Argentina combined. This annual increase in food demand is made
up of a 2 % annual increase in population and a 0.5 % increased
demand per capita. Part of the rising per capita demand reflects
improvement in diets of some of the peoples of the developing
countries. In the less developed countries about 400 pounds of grain
is available per person per year and is mostly eaten as cereal. The
average North American, however, uses nearly a ton of grain a year,
only 200 pounds directly and the rest in the form of meat, milk, and
eggs for which several pounds of cereal are required to produce one
pound of the animal product (e.g., five pounds of grain to produce
one pound of beef).
During the past two decades, LDCs have been able to keep food
production ahead of population, notwithstanding the unprecedentedly
high rates of population growth. The basic figures are sum- marized
in the following table: [calculated from data in USDA, The World
Agricultural Situation, March 1974]: INDICES OF WORLD POPULATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION
(excluding Peoples Republic of China)
1954=100
+--------------------+--------------------+------------------------+
| WORLD | DEVELOPED COUNTRIES|LESS DEVELOPED COUNTRIES|
| Food | Food | Food |
| production | production | production |
| | | |
| Popu- Per | Popu- Per | Popu- Per |
|lation Total Capita|lation Total Capita|lation Total Capita |
+------+--------------------+--------------------+------------------------+
| 1954 | 100 100 100 | 100 100 100 | 100 100 100 |
| 1973 | 144 170 119 | 124 170 138 | 159 171 107 |
| | |
| Compound Annual Increase (%): |
| | 1.9 2.8 0.9 | 1.1 2.8 1.7 | 2.5 2.9 0.4 |
+------+--------------------+--------------------+------------------------+
________________________________________________________________________
It will be noted that the relative gain in LDC total food
production was just as great as for advanced countries, but was far
less on a per capita basis because of the sharp difference in
population growth rates. Moreover, within the LDC group were 24
countries (including Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Zaire,
Algeria, Guyana, Iraq, and Chile) in which the rate of increase of
population growth exceeded the rate of increase in food production;
and a much more populous group (including India, Pakistan, and
Bangladesh) in which the rate of increase in production barely
exceeded population growth but did not keep up with the increase in
domestic demand. [World Food Conference, Preliminary Assessment, 8
May 1974; U.N. Document E/CONF. 65/PREP/6, p. 33.]
General requirements have been projected for the years 1985 and
2000, based on the UN Medium Variant population estimates and
allowing for a very small improvement in diets in the LDCs.
A recent projection made by the Department of Agriculture
indicates a potential productive capacity more than adequate to meet
world cereal requirements (the staple food of the world) of a
population of 6.4 billion in the year 2000 (medium fertility
variant) at roughly current relative prices.
This overall picture offers little cause for complacency when
broken down by geographic regions. To support only a very modest
improvement in current cereal consumption levels (from 177 kilograms
per capita in 1970 to 200-206 kilograms in 2000) the projections
show an alarming increase in LDC dependency on imports. Such imports
are projected to rise from 21.4 million tons in 1970 to 102-122
million tons by the end of the century. Cereal imports would
increase to 13-15 percent of total developing country consumption as
against 8 percent in 1970. As a group, the advanced countries cannot
only meet their own needs but will also generate a substantial
surplus. For the LDCs, analyses of food production capacity foresee
the physical possibility of meeting their needs, provided that (a)
weather conditions are normal, (b) yields per unit of area continue
to improve at the rates of the last decade, bringing the average by
1985 close to present yields in the advanced countries, and (c) a
substantially larger annual transfer of grains can be arranged from
the surplus countries (mainly North America), either through
commercial sales or through continuous and growing food aid. The
estimates of production capacity do not rely on major new technical
breakthroughs in food production methods, but they do require the
availability and application of greatly increased quantities of
fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation water, and other inputs to
modernized agriculture, together with continued technological
advances at past rates and the institutional and administrative
reforms (including vastly expanded research and extension services)
essential to the successful application of these inputs. They also
assume normal weather conditions. Substantial political will is
required in the LDCs to give the necessary priority to food
production.
There is great uncertainty whether the conditions for achieving
food balance in the LDCs can in fact be realized.
Climatic changes are poorly understood, but a persistent
atmospheric cooling trend since 1940 has been established. One
respectable body of scientific opinion believes that this portends a
period of much wider annual frosts, and possibly a long-term
lowering of rainfall in the monsoon areas of Asia and Africa.
Nitrogen fertilizer will be in world short supply into the late
1970s, at least; because of higher energy prices, it may also be
more costly in real terms than in the 1960s. Capital investments for
irrigation and infrastructure and the organizational requirements
for securing continuous improvements in agricultural yields may well
be beyond the financial and administrative capacity of many LDCs.
For some of the areas under heaviest population pressure, there is
little or no prospect for foreign exchange earnings to cover
constantly increasing imports of food.
While it is always unwise to project the recent past into the
long-term future, the experience of 1972-73 is very sobering. The
coincidence of adverse weather in many regions in 1972 brought per
capita production in the LDCs back to the level of the early 1960s.
At the same time, world food reserves (mainly American) were almost
exhausted, and they were not rebuilt during the high production year
of 1973. A repetition under these conditions of 1972 weather
patterns would result in large-scale famine of a kind not
experienced for several decades a kind the world thought had been
permanently banished.
Even if massive famine can be averted, the most optimistic
forecasts of food production potential in the more populous LDCs
show little improvement in the presently inadequate levels and
quality of nutrition. As long as annual population growth continues
at 2 to 3 percent or more, LDCs must make expanded food production
the top development priority, even though it may absorb a large
fraction of available capital and foreign exchange.
Moderation of population growth rates in the LDCs could make some
difference to food requirements by 1985, a substantial difference by
2000, and a vast difference in the early part of the next century.
From the viewpoint of U.S. interests, such reductions in LDC food
needs would be clearly advantageous. They would not reduce American
commercial markets for food since the reduction in LDC food
requirements that would result from slowing population growth would
affect only requests for concessional or grant food assistance, not
commercial sales. They would improve the prospects for maintaining
adequate world food reserves against climatic emergencies. They
would reduce the likelihood of periodic famines in region after
region, accompanied by food riots and chronic social and political
instability. They would improve the possibilities for long-term
development and integration into a peaceful world order.
Even taking the most optimistic view of the theoretical
possibilities of producing enough foods in the developed countries
to meet the requirements of the developing countries, the problem of
increased costs to the LDCs is already extremely serious and in its
future may be insurmountable. At current prices the anticipated
import requirements of 102-122 million tons by 2000 would raise the
cost of developing countries' imports of cereals to $16-20 [At
$160.00 per ton] billion by that year compared with $2.5 billion in
1970. Large as they may seem even these estimates of import
requirements could be on the low side if the developing countries
are unable to achieve the Department of Agriculture's assumed
increase in the rate of growth of production.
The FAO in its recent "Preliminary Assessment of the World Food
Situation Present and Future" has reached a similar conclusion:
What is certain is the enormity of the food import bill which
might face the developing countries . . . In addition [to cereals]
the developing countries . . . would be importing substantial
amounts of other foodstuffs. clearly the financing of international
food trade on this scale would raise very grave problems.
At least three-quarters of the projected increase in cereal
imports of developing countries would fall in the poorer countries
of South Asia and North and Central Africa. The situation in Latin
America which is projected to shift from a modest surplus to a
modest deficit area is quite different. Most of this deficit will be
in Mexico and Central America, with relatively high income and
easily exploitable transportation links to the U.S. The problem in
Latin America, therefore, appears relatively more manageable.
It seems highly unlikely, however, that the poorer countries of
Asia and Africa will be able to finance nearly like the level of
import requirements projected by the USDA. Few of them have dynamic
export-oriented industrial sectors like Taiwan or South Korea or
rich raw material resources that will generate export earnings fast
enough to keep pace with food import needs. Accordingly, those
countries where large-scale hunger and malnutrition are already
present face the bleak prospect of little, if any, improvement in
the food intake in the years ahead barring a major foreign financial
food aid program, more rapid expansion of domestic food production,
reduced population growth or some combination of all three. Worse
yet, a series of crop disasters could transform some of them into
classic Malthusian cases with famines involving millions of
people.
While foreign assistance probably will continue to be forthcoming
to meet short-term emergency situations like the threat of mass
starvation, it is more questionable whether aid donor countries will
be prepared to provide the sort of massive food aid called for by
the import projections on a long-term continuing basis.
Reduced population growth rates clearly could bring significant
relief over the longer term. Some analysts maintain that for the
post-1985 period a rapid decline in fertility will be crucial to
adequate diets worldwide. If, as noted before, fertility in the
developing countries could be made to decline to the replacement
level by the year 2000, the world's population in that year would be
5.9 billion or 500 million below the level that would be attained if
the UN medium projection were followed. Nearly all of the decline
would be in the LDCs. With such a reduction the projected import gap
of 102-122 million tons per year could be eliminated while still
permitting a modest improvement in per capita consumption. While
such a rapid reduction in fertility rates in the next 30 years is an
optimistic target, it is thought by some experts that it could be
obtained by intensified efforts if its necessity were understood by
world and national leaders. Even more modest reductions could have
significant implications by 2000 and even more over time.
Intensive programs to increase food production in developing
countries beyond the levels assumed in the U.S.D.A. projections
probably offer the best prospect for some reasonably early relief,
although this poses major technical and organizational difficulties
and will involve substantial costs. It must be realized, however,
that this will be difficult in all countries and probably impossible
in some or many. Even with the introduction of new inputs and
techniques it has not been possible to increase agricultural output
by as much as 3 percent per annum in many of the poorer developing
countries. Population growth in a number of these countries exceeds
that rate.
Such a program of increased food production would require the
widespread use of improved seed varieties, increased applications of
chemical fertilizers and pesticides over vast areas and better farm
management along with bringing new land under cultivation. It has
been estimated, for example, that with better varieties, pest
control, and the application of fertilizer on the Japanese scale,
Indian rice yields could theoretically at least, be raised two and
one-half times current levels. Here again very substantial foreign
assistance for imported materials may be required for at least the
early years before the program begins to take hold.
The problem is clear. The solutions, or at least the directions
we must travel to reach them are also generally agreed. What will be
required is a genuine commitment to a set of policies that will lead
the international community, both developed and developing
countries, to the achievement of the objectives spelled out
above. |