World Food Supply and Demand for the Next HalfCentury Some Alternative Scenarios

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World Food Supply and Demand for the Next
Half-CenturySome Alternative Scenarios

• Text extracted from
• The World Food Problem
• Leathers and Foster, 2004

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Apocalypse Now?

• Famine is one of the Four Horsemen of the
  Apocalypse
• (War, Famine, Pestilence, Death)
• What will the future be?
• Will the progress of the last 30 years continue?
• Or are we on the brink of catastrophe?

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The 6 Ps

• Major factors
• Population
• Prosperity
• Productivity
• Pollution
• Interplay of these will determine
• Price of food
• Humanitys hope to influence the future
• Policy

Jeffrey Sachs, Director of UN Millennium
Development Project
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Two Views of the Future

• Establishment view
• FAO
• World Bank
• International Food Price Institute
• U.S. Department of Agriculture
• Antiestablishment View
• David Pimentel, Cornell University
• World Watch Institute

Per Pinstrup-Anderson, International Food Price
Research Institute
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Establishment View

• World Agriculture production continues to grow
• World population growing more slowly
• Income/person continues to grow
• Thus no catastrophic changes
• Confidence in technology of the future
• Policies need to support progress
• Future generations will be more prosperous

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Antiestablishment View

• Possibility of environmental catastrophe
• Erosion
• Land degradation
• Water shortage for irrigation
• Rising sea levels from global warming
• Continued slow yield growth
• Pessimistic about technology
• Sweeping policy changes needed
• Radical economic and political restructuring
• Future generations will suffer
• We are eating the seed
• Need radical reduction in consumption

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Establishment View Scenario50 Years From Now

• Population 60 higher
• Average income will double
• Calories/capita will increase by 15
• More meat
• Total food demand will increase by 108
• Total food supply will increase by 110
• Ag land increases 13
• Yields increase 86
• Undernutrition will decline
• Incomes higher, prices lower

Family meal, Brazil
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If Assumptions Change

• If lower population growth
• 74 increase in food
• 72 price decline!
• If higher population growth or lower yield
  growth
• Demand rises faster than supply
• Prices rise substantially
• But incomes rise more than prices
• Modest increase in calories/person

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Antiestablishment View Scenario50 Years From Now

• Same increase in population (60)
• Less increase in income (28)
• Increase in per capita food demand of 4
• Total food demand increases 70
• Total food supply will decline 6
• 15 decrease in ag land
• Small increase in yields/hectare
• Price of food rises 110
• Undernutrition increases substantially

Orphanage, Nicaragua
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If Assumptions Change

• If population grows more rapidly and income is
  stagnant
• Population increases 120
• Income growth is 0
• Food prices increase 181
• Calories/capita 2,256
• Lower than Africa today
• Widespread undernutrition
• If yields grow a little more strongly
• Catastrophe averted
• Slight decline in calories/person

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Policy Agreement

• Reduce population growth rate
• Promote economic prosperity, health, and
  education
• Invest in agricultural productivity
• Research, extension, credit, markets
• Protect soil and water resources
• Assign property rights
• Gives resource owners a stake in environmental
  protection
• Encourage economic growth among the poorest
• Macroeconomic policies, competitive markets,
  human capital

Farmer, Zambia
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The unfinished task

• It is for us, the living,
• to be dedicated to the
• unfinished task
• Abraham Lincoln
• Gettysburg Address

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