1. Food, agriculture and food security: developments since the World Food Conference and prospects

Technical background documents 1-5
Volume 1
FAO, 1996

Contents

Acknowledgements

Executive summary

1. INTRODUCTION

2. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS AND THE PRESENT SITUATION

Tracking the evolution of the food security situation through time

Developments leading up to the World Food Conference

Developments since the World Food Conference: developing countries

Stability and durability of gains in food security

An overview of food production growth rates and net cereal imports in the developing countries

The overall evolution in the developed countries

3. MAIN FACTORS IN THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF PER CAPUT FOOD SUPPLIES

The correlates of success in raising per caput food supplies

The correlates of failure and retrogression

4. PROSPECTS TO 2010: DEMAND, SUPPLY, TRADE AND NUTRITION

Continuing, but slower, growth in world population

Better prospects for overall economic growth in the developing countries but with significant exceptions

World agricultural growth will continue to slow down

Progress in food and nutrition, but not for all

Prospects for major commodities

The developing countries’ likely turn from net agricultural exporters to net importers

Prospects for the major commodity sectors: significance for food security

5. PROSPECTS TO 2010: AGRICULTURAL RESOURCES AND YIELDS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Agricultural land and irrigation

Land-yield combinations for major crops

Considerations relating to the potential for yield growth

6. ISSUES OF AGRICULTURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY

General considerations

Land and water resources in the quest for sustainable responses to the food problem

Agricultural activity and the degradation of agricultural resources

Future dimensions

7. CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acknowledgements

The preparation of the World Food Summit technical background documents has mobilized, in addition to FAO’s own staff contributions, a considerable amount of expertise in the international scientific community, drawn from partner international institutions and governmental or non-governmental circles. The process has been monitored at FAO by an internal Reading Committee, composed of staff selected ad personam, and established to ensure that the whole collection meets appropriate quality and consistency criteria.

The present document has been prepared by Nikos Alexandratos, with contributions from Jelle Bruinsma, both of the Global Perspective Studies Unit of FAO. After initial review within FAO by all technical departments, invited colleagues and the Reading Committee, and by selected external reviewers, a first version was published and circulated for comments to governments, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as further peer reviewers. Much appreciated comments and advice have been received from Messrs Don Winkelman, Chair, Technical Advisory Committee to the CGIAR; Martin Pi�eiro, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA); Klaus Leisinger, on behalf of the Government of Switzerland; Kirit Parikh, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, India; Michiel Keyzer, Centre for World Food Studies, the Netherlands; Alex Duncan, Food Studies Group, Oxford University; Prof. M. Kassas, Cairo University; Bob Livernash, World Resources Institute and International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC; USAID, United States; Piet Bukman, on behalf of the Government of the Netherlands; the Government of the United Kingdom; and the World Trade Organization.

While grateful for the contributions received from all reviewers, the FAO Secretariat bears the responsibility for the content of the document.

Executive summary

This technical paper is a brief review of developments in world food and agriculture and food security from the early 1960s to the present, with particular reference to developments since the World Food Conference of 1974. It also presents the possible evolution over the period to 2010, as depicted in the 1995 FAO study World agriculture: towards 2010 (WAT2010).

The main, generally available indicator for monitoring developments in world food security is per caput food consumption, measured at the national level by the average dietary energy supply (DES) in Calories on the basis of national food balance sheets (FBS) and population data. This makes it possible to follow, through space and time, the evolution of food supplies as national averages. On that basis, the evolution of world food security in the period beginning after the World Food Conference up to the study’s projections to 2010 can be envisaged as shown in Summary Table 1.

There are no internationally comparable comprehensive data for tracking the evolution of access to food for individuals or population groups within countries. Remaining at the level of national averages, the population of developing countries can be regrouped as shown in Summary Table 2.

To interpret these data, the following concepts are useful to derive inferences on the extent of undernutrition within countries. A threshold is defined as corresponding to the average (given gender, age distribution and average body weights) DES that represents a minimum level of energy requirements for individuals, allowing for only light activity. This level ranges from 1 720 to 1 960 Calories/day/person, depending on the country. Indirect evidence from household food consumption or expenditure surveys is used to estimate the extent of inequality of distribution of available food supplies within countries. This makes it possible to draw inferences about the approximate proportions of the population with access to food below the given nutritional threshold. It results that, for countries where the average DES is close to the threshold, the majority of individuals are undernourished, while experience shows that for countries with DES about a level of, say, 2 700 Calories, the proportion of undernourished individuals becomes small, except under extreme inequalities. Accordingly, and this is the information closest to the concept of access to food, the population in developing countries below the respective threshold has been estimated as shown in Summary Table 3.

For several developing countries, the 1970s was a decade of improvement faster than that of the 1960s. Rapid progress continued up to about the mid-1980s, and at a slower pace afterwards. But several countries and whole regions failed to make progress and experienced outright reversals, foremost among them many African countries, while South Asia made only meagre progress in the 1970s but more substantial gains in the 1980s.

The dependence of the developing countries on food imports from the developed countries grew strongly in the 1970s and their self-sufficiency fell. This trend was much attenuated in the subsequent decade. Together, the developed Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries readily increased cereals production to supply the growing import demand of the developing countries as well as that of the former centrally planned economies (CPEs) of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). However, world production of cereals levelled off in the first half of the 1990s, the demand-supply balance in world markets became tighter, prices rose and stocks diminished. These recent developments reflected the temporary declines in the former CPEs during the economic transition, weather shocks and policy reforms in the main developed exporting countries towards a reduction of structural surpluses and publicly held stocks.

World agricultural growth is likely to be slower in the future compared with that of earlier decades, although not as slow as that observed in the first half of the 1990s. This slow-down is imputable to a slower world food demand growth, which reflects both positive and negative developments in the world food and agriculture scene. The positive ones include the slow-down in world population growth and the fact that, in many countries with fairly high levels of per caput food consumption, the scope for further increases in this variable is smaller than in the past. Negative developments include the totally inadequate growth in per caput incomes and the continued prevalence of severe poverty in many countries with very low levels of nutrition.

The implication is that, in many developing countries, per caput food supplies may remain stubbornly inadequate to allow for significant nutritional progress, even though for these countries as a whole the average may increase further to nearly 2 800 Calories per day by the year 2010. Under the circumstances, and given population growth, the numbers of undernourished in these conditions may decline only insufficiently from the current 840 million to possibly 680 million, although this would represent a significant decline in the share of the total population.

The dependence of the developing countries on food imports will most likely continue to increase with net imports of cereals growing to over 160 million tonnes by 2010. The main developed exporting countries will probably not face major constraints in generating this level of net exports. A contribution to this possible outcome may be forthcoming from the former CPEs, initially by their transition to being much smaller net importers and eventually to their emergence as net exporters. But while the global capacity to increase food production to match the growth of effective demand may not give cause for excessive concern, production growth constraints facing individual countries will continue to be a major factor conditioning the prospects for progress in food security. This is particularly the case of low-income countries heavily dependent on their own agriculture for food supplies, income and employment and with limited potential to import food. And, of course, the well-known constraints to increasing output of capture fisheries is another example of how the prospects for improved food security could be affected by limitations on the side of production.

In considering the role of production prospects as a key factor in the food security problem, the issue of sustainability assumes particular importance. The historical experience is that the expansion and intensification of agriculture has often been associated with the buildup of pressures that have led to resource degradation and adverse impacts on the wider environment. Such pressures will continue to increase in the future and a major issue will be how to minimize the negative effects on the resources, the environment and the sustainability of agriculture. This is particularly important for those low-income countries where the exploitation of agricultural resources is the mainstay of their economies and the deterioration of their resources threatens both their food security and overall economic well-being. At the same time, it is in these very countries that continued poverty and further increases in the population dependent on agriculture intensify pressures that contribute to degradation and unsustainability.

The overall conclusion is that, without deliberate changes from the normal course of events, many of the food security problems of today will persist and some will become worse. This need not be so, however, if action is taken now to promote poverty-reducing growth and agricultural development as well as to put agriculture on to a more sustainable path.