Sowing the Seeds of Self-Reliance for Forty Years
Optimists and Pessimists
Ponder Our Children’s Food Supply
10 June 97
by Geri Guidetti
All contents copyright © 1997, Geri Guidetti.  All rights reserved.
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For the most part, this season’s food crops have been planted here in the U.S. wherever they can be. The second week in June is the usual deadline for planting spring wheat in most North Central grain states, so what wheat does not get into the ground this week in those five important states will not get there. Given the unrelated amendments tacked onto the relief moneys promised to the folks in the Dakotas and Minnesota by members of Congress, and the subsequent veto of the package by the President, it is unlikely that these farmers will get repaired or replacement equipment into their flood-ravaged fields this season.

As we watch increasingly unusual weather patterns impact agriculture around the world, and wait for this year’s food crops to develop, it might be a good time to evaluate the likely future of our children’s food supply. Data and opinions expressed by both optimists and pessimists suggest that the generation of children who will need to deal with food supply as a critical human survival issue has already been born. This isn’t just kids in developing countries, but all kids. In the truly global food marketplace that is rapidly developing, all of us will be essentially eating out of the same bowl. This is going to become painfully apparent to our children in the next ten to fifteen years.

At the 1997 Agricultural Outlook Forum, Alex McCalla, Director of the Agriculture and Natural Resources Department of the World Bank, spoke at length of food needs for the 21st Century. He suggested that global population, expected to rise from the 5 billion estimated in the 1990s to around 8 billion in 2025, will combine with increasing income in developing countries to double the food needs of the world in the next 30 years. Double. With increasing urbanization caused by all of those people heading to expanding, mega-cities to make livings, more of the food supply will need to be processed for transportation and storage. In other words, food will be grown at increasing distances from the areas in which it is consumed and will enter markets and complex distribution systems within and between countries.

McCalla asks the question:
"...can the world produce enough food to feed 8 billion and at the same time hopefully reduce the number of undernourished below the current level of 800 million? If so, where will it be produced? Will we break away from the mental mindset of equating food security with national food self-sufficiency and ask where the food SHOULD be produced? And finally, does the world have a trading system that will allow increasing quantities of food to flow from surplus to deficit areas?"

(I would also ask if the world will ever have the political system(s) which will allow/desire the free flow of food from a region with a good harvest to one with a poor harvest in any given season. Friend to foe and vice versa?)
From the 1960s to the 1990s, global food production expanded based on three main factors:

oBiological yields of food plants increased

oIrrigation of marginal lands increased

oThe area farmed increased

According to McCalla’s figures, global grain production more than doubled, per capita food production went up 37% and real food prices fell by nearly 50%. Yet, in absolute terms, under-nutrition diminished very little. Despite increasing supply, over 1 billion people suffered key nutrient deficiencies in the 1960s, and 1.6 billion suffer iodine and 2.0 billion iron deficiencies in the 1990s.

The past three years have challenged the optimists’ views that we will be able to continue to increase production and supply to meet global demand. Unusual and extreme weather patterns and poor harvests caused the prices of wheat corn and rice to increase by 70-100 per cent by April of 1996. Prices have fallen again recently, but remain volatile. Food experts asked the question: is this a short-term anomaly, or is this the pessimists’ dreaded beginning of demand outrunning supply? The pessimists argue that there will be prolonged periods of shortages and the resulting high prices. They predict declining rates of growth in food plant yields. The loss of agricultural lands to industrial and residential development, diminishing water supplies and environmental deterioration will also contribute to our failure to meet growing demand for food.

The optimists accuse the pessimists of overreacting to a bad U.S. harvest in 1995 and to agricultural policy changes in the U.S. and the European Union. The latter changes resulted in reduced storage of food stocks among other things. The optimists continue to argue that production will continue expanding and prices will level out and then continue to decline in real terms.

McCalla pointed out that careful analysis suggests a more complex set of causes. Policy changes in the EU and US and pricing changes in Australia and Canada caused the decline of harvested grain areas and grain stocks to decline. These changes, coupled with the bad harvest of 1995, triggered the short supplies and high prices. This would seem to support the optimists who argue that this was a temporary shortage and price spike and not a trend. But even the optimists admit to trouble when looking into the future. McCalla said:

"Views of the challenge of food security for all diverge more strongly as the time frame is lengthened. Those using economic projection or simulation models, based significantly on history, tend to project sufficient global supplies at least until 2010. Those projecting on the basis of resource availability and environmental constraints (perhaps these could be called ecological models) all are generally much more pessimistic. The most extreme view combines resource constraints with biological pessimism and foresee serious problems ahead (Brown and Kane)."

Three recent studies project grain yields and harvests to increase to the year 2010, with prices to remain constant or decline. In reviewing these studies, Islam Nurul of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C. stated:

"There was general agreement the world food supply in 2010 would probably meet global demand but regional problems would occur.....The key to future food supplies was seen as increased productivity, that is, yields must continue to rise; to accomplish this, sustained support for investment in agriculture, including research expenditures, would be needed."

Brown and Kane (1994) argued that there is little untapped agricultural technology to support this view, that range land carrying capacity has already been exceeded, and that demands for water have reached supply limits. They point to figures that demonstrate clearly that cropland, especially in China, is being lost to urbanization, industrialization and degradation. They propose that the only possible solution is greatly expanded trade. (Here again, we are back to the question of whether political differences between countries and states will be put aside to allow the free flow of food from areas of bounty to those of want in any one or more seasons. We need only look as far as North Korea and Iraq to answer that question, I think.)

Optimists and pessimists agree on a few things—the need for continuing investment in agricultural technology and research, the need for more efficient use of natural resources, and a halt to the degradation of the environment.
McCalla suggests that the real future of food supplies lies somewhere between the two group’s views. He sees the feeding of an additional 2.5 billion more people as "an enormous challenge" and that any rise in agricultural production must come from raising biological yields, not from expansion of land farmed or more irrigation. Most fertile land is now under cultivation and areas suitable for irrigation have already been used. He concludes:

"Future global, national and household food security in the long run can be accomplished if we can develop sustainable production systems capable of nearly doubling output; if we have in place domestic and international policies and institutions which do not discriminate against agriculture and provide appropriate incentive to hundreds of millions of farmers around the world; if we continue to invest in public agricultural research ...and if we stay the course with removing distortion to freer agricultural trade in all countries. These are four big "ifs" , but they must be met. For without them, the long term prospects are not very pleasant to contemplate."

Like it or not, we cannot afford to be uninvolved in global food issues. The systems, policies and politics that will determine if we eat and if the children already in our families eat in the near and intermediate future are being formed and executed as we write/read this. Food will become THE leading political weapon rattled at global conference tables in the coming years. And the "guy" with the most toys (and guns) isn’t necessarily going to be the winner. It’s a whole new world, a whole new game and, to a large extent, Mother Nature is now dealing the deck....... Geri Guidetti, The Ark Institute
 
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Food and Grain Supply Updates may be reprinted without permission IF no revisions are made and copyright and signature files remain intact.
All contents copyright © 1997, Geri Guidetti.  All rights reserved.
Revised: 10 June 97




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