COMMUNIQUE ON DEVELOPMENT ISSUES (No. 21), OVERSEAS

DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

THE CHANGING FACE OF FOOD SCARCITY

(By Lester R. Brown)

The world food situation has been dramatized this year by some unusual factors-including the poor rice harvest in Asia, the shortfall in the Soviet wheat crop, and the disappearance of the anchoveta off the coast of Peru. But today's shortages and sharp price increases are not merely temporary phenomena. They reflect certain long-term trends and augur a global shift from an era of commercial surpluses to one of frequently tight global supplies of essential foodstuffs. Rising affluence has now joined population growth as a major factor behind the burgeoning global demand for food.

These trends present a strong case for stepping up international cooperation in building up world food reserves, managing oceanic fisheries, and stabilizing population growth. Most important, they demonstrate the urgency of assisting the agricultural development of the poor countries for our mutual benefit. With appropriate organization and inputs, many of these countries can achieve dramatic increases in food production-at far less additional cost than in the advanced producer nations-to help meet the permanent, long-term increase in demand.

POPULATION AND AFFLUENCE

During the 1960s, the world food problem was perceived as a food/population problem-as a race between food and people. At the global level, population growth remains the dominant cause of increasing demand for food. Expanding at nearly 2 per cent per year, world population will double in little more than a generation. Merely maintaining current per capita consumption levels will require nearly a doubling of food production over the next generation. But beyond this pressure of population on supply, rising affluence is also emerging as a major new claimant on world food resources.

This impact of rising affluence on demand for food can best be illustrated by its effect on consumption of cereals, which dominate the world food economy. In the poor countries, annual consumption of grain averages about 400 pounds per person. Virtually all of this small amount must be consumed directly to meet minimum energy needs. In the United States and Canada, by contrast, per capita grain use is approaching one ton per year. All but 150 pounds of this per capita total is consumed indirectly in the form of meat, milk, and eggs. In the case of beef alone, annual per capita consumption in the United States has grown from 55 pounds in 1940 to 117 pounds in 1972. During the same period, the American population has expanded by 57 per cent. Altogether, national beef consumption has tripled, making the United States a leading beef importer.

In the northern tier of industrial countries, stretching from Western Europe through the Soviet Union to Japan, dietary habits now more or less approximate those of the United States in 1940. As incomes continue to rise in this group of countries (which total some two-thirds of a billion people), a sizable share of the additional income is being converted into demand for livestock products, particularly beef. Many of these countries lack the capacity to satisfy the growth in demand for livestock products entirely from indigenous resources. As a result, they are importing increasing amounts of livestock products, or of feedgrains and soybeans with which to expand their livestock production. Thus, for example, Japan alone imported 17 million tons in grains this past year-compared to India's imports of just under 10 million tons during the drought crisis of 1966–67. (105)

CONSTRAINTS ON EXPANDING THE WORLD FOOD SUPPLY

As the world demand for food climbs due to both population growth and rising affluence, several important constraints on the further expansion of global food production become increasingly apparent. The traditional approach to increasing production-expanding the area under cultivation-has only limited scope for the future. Some more densely populated countries, such as Japan and several Western European countries, have been experiencing a reduction in the land used for crop production, while other parts of the world have been losing disturbingly large acreages of cropland each year because of severe soil erosion. An even more important constraint in the future may be the shortage of water for agricultural purposes. In many regions of the world, fertile agricultural land is available if water can be found to make it productive. Yet most of the rivers that lend themselves to damming and to irrigation have already been developed. Future efforts to expand fresh water supplies for agricultural purposes will increasingly focus on such techniques as the diversion of rivers (as in the Soviet Union), desalting sea water, and the manipulation of rainfall patterns.

One of the key questions concerning future gains in agricultural production is: can the more advanced countries sustain the trend of rising per acre yields of cereals without major cost increases? In some agriculturally advanced countriessuch as Japan and the Western European countries-the cost per increment of yield per acre for some crops already is rising. What impact the energy crisis will have on food production costs and trends also remains to be seen. Rising energy costs may cause farmers engaged in high-energy agriculture, as in the United States, to increase production less than they would otherwise.

In looking ahead, there is reason for particular concern about the difficulties of expanding the world protein supply to meet the rapid growth in demand. Two major constraints are operative in the case of beef. Agricultural scientists have not been able to devise any commercially viable means of getting more than one calf per cow per year. For every animal that goes into the beef production process, one adult animal must be fed and otherwise maintained for a full year. The other constraint on beef production is that the grazing capacity of much of the world's pasture land is now almost fully utilized. This is true, for example, in most of the U.S. Great Plains area, in East Africa, and in parts of Australia.

A further potentially serious constraint on efforts to expand supplies of highquality protein is the inability of scientists to achieve a breakthrough in per acre yields of soybeans. Soybeans are a major source of high-quality protein for livestock and poultry throughout much of the world and are consumed directly as food by more than a billion people throughout densely populated East Asia. In the United States, which now produces two-thirds of the world's soybean crop and supplies about 90 per cent of all soybeans entering the world market, soybean yields per acre have increased by about 1 per cent per year since 1950; corn yields, on the other hand, have increased by nearly 4 per cent per year. One reason why soybean yields have not climbed very rapidly is that the soybean, being a legume with a built-in nitrogen supply, is not very responsive to nitrogen fertilizer. Close to 85 per cent of the dramatic fourfold increase in the U.S. soybean crop since 1950 has come from expanding the area devoted to it-a process which cannot continue indefinitely.

The oceans are a third major source of protein. In 1969, twenty years of sustained growth in the world fish catch were interrupted by a sudden decline. The catch has since been fluctuating rather unpredicably, while the amounts of time and money expended to bring it in continue to rise every year. Many marine biologists now feel that the global catch of tablegrade fish is at or near the maximum sustainable level. If, as currently seems probable, the global fish catch does not continue rising in the next decades as it did during the last two, the pressures on land-based protein sources can be expected to increase substantially. Although there are substantial opportunities for expanding the world protein supply, it now seems likely that the supply of animal protein will lag behind growth in demand for some time to come, resulting in significantly higher prices for livestock products during the 1970s than prevailed during the 1960s. We may be witnessing the transformation of the world protein market from a buyer's market to a seller's market, much as the world energy market has been transformed over the past few years.

THE DEPLETION OF GLOBAL RESERVES

Since World War II, the world has been fortunate to have, in effect, two major food reserves. One was in the form of grain reserves in the principal exporting countries and the other in the form of reserve cropland idled under farm programs in the United States. As world consumption expands by some 2.5 per cent annually, so should the size of global grain reserves, but over the past decade reserves have dwindled while consumption has climbed by one third.

One seventh of U.S. cropland, or roughly 50 million acres out of 350 million acres, has been idled under farm programs for more than a decade. Though this idle acreage is not as quickly available as grain reserves, it has been possible to bring it back into production within 12 to 18 months once the decision was made to do so.

In recent years, the need to draw down grain reserves and to utilize the reserve of idled cropland has occurred with increasing frequency. This first happened during the food crisis years of 1966 and 1967, and again in 1971 as a result of the corn blight in the United States. In 1973, in response to growing food scarcities, world grain reserves once more declined, and the United States again resorted to cultivating its idled cropland, but to a much greater degree than on either of the two previous occasions. Government decisions in early 1973 permitted at least two thirds of the idled cropland to come back into production, and the government announced plans to eliminate all payments for idled cropland in the 1973/74 crop year. In the years ahead, world food reserves may become chronically low and the idled crop acreage in the United States may decline sharply or even disappear entirely. Consequently there is the prospect of very volatile world prices for the important food commodities.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

The current international scarcity of major agricultural commodities reflects important long-term trends. This changing situation calls for several important policy emphases:

1. Population stabilization. The possibility of a chronic global scarcity of food resulting from growing pressures on available food resources underlines the urgency of halting population growth as soon as possible. Current demographic trends suggest that this could occur in many industrial countries within the not too distant future. In the poor counries, however, it will be much more difficult to achieve; the historical record indicates that birth rates do not usually decline unless certain basic social needs are satisfied-an assured food supply, a reduced infant mortanity rate, and the availability of appropriate health and educational services. Population-induced pressures on the global food supply will continue to increase dramatically if substantial economic and social progress is not made. Populations that double every 24 years as many are doing in poor nations-multiply 16-fold in scarcely three generations! It may well be in the self-interest of affluent societies such as the United States to launch an attack on global poverty not only to narrow the economic gap beween rich and poor nations, but also to meet the basic social needs of people throughout the world in an effort to provide incentives for lowering birth rates.

2. A World Food Reserve. These population trends, together with the emerging constraints on food production, call for serious consideration of the creation of an internationally managed world food reserve. Just as the U.S. dollar can no longer serve as the foundation of the international monetary system, so U.S. agriculture may no longer have sufficient excess capacity to ensure reasonable stability in the world food economy.

A world reserve could be built up in times of relative abundance and drawn down in times of acute scarcity, thereby helping to stabilize prices to the consumer. In effect, the cushion that surplus American agricultural capacity has provided for a generation would be provided at least partially by a world food reserve system. A system of global food reserves would provide a measure of price stability in the world food economy that would be in the self-interest of all nations. The world community of course also has a basic humanitarian interest in ensuring that famine does not occur in the densely populated low-income countries following a poor crop year-an assurance the affluent nations may be less able to provide in the future if the current system of autonomous, nationally oriented food planning is allowed to continue without modification.

An important first step would be international adoption of the concept of "minimum world food security" proposed in early 1973 by Dr. A. H. Boerma of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Under the FAO plan, all governments-exporters and importers-would be asked to hold certain minimum levels of food stocks to meet international emergencies. The governments of participating countries would consult regularly to review the food situation, judge the adequacy of existing stocks, and recommend necessary actions. International agencies such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the FAO would help poor countries to establish and maintain the reserve stocks necessary for self-protection against crop failures.

Any system of global food reserves, whether a single centrally managed food bank, or the proposed FAO plan of coordinated national reserve policies, would provide a measure of stability in the world food economy that would be in the self-interest of all nations.

3. International management of oceanic fisheries. A close examination of the extent of over-fishing and stock depletion in many of the world's fisheries also underlines the urgency of evolving a cooperative global approach to the management of oceanic fisheries. Failure to do this may result in soaring seafood prices that will make those of the early 1970s seem modest by comparison. It is in this context that all nations have a direct interest in the success of the upcoming U.N. Law of the Sea Conference.

4. Increased support for agricultural development of poor countries. One of the most immediate means of expanding the food supply clearly is the return of idled U.S. cropland to production. Over the longer run, however, the greatest opportunities for increased production are in the developing countries, the world's greatest reservoir of untapped food-production potential.

The changing nature of global food scarcity and the diminishing capacity of the international community to respond to food emergencies make it all the more urgent to strengthen support for the agricultural development of such populous, food-short countries as Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria. Such support should give special attention to the role of small farms in the production effort. There is growing evidence that in many developing countries, small farmers-provided they have been given effective access to needed agricultural inputs as well as health and educational services-engage in more intensive cultivation and generally average considerably higher yields per acre than do large farmers. As suggested earlier, by improving the access of the poorest majority to both income and services, this approach to rural development also greatly increases the motivation for limiting family size.

One important step in the right direction is a bipartisan legislative proposal introduced in the U.S. Congress in 1973 that would restructure the U.S. Agency for International Development and increase by 50 per cent the support it provides for agricultural and rural development in the years immediately ahead. This proposal seeks to capitalize on the unique capacity of the United States to lead an enlarged effort to expand the world's food supply.

In those countries having the appropriate organization, economic incentives, fertilizer, water, and other necessary agricultural inputs, the introduction of new wheat and rice varieties has increased production substantially. The jump in ver acre yields in several developing countries appears dramatic largely because their yields traditionally have been so low relative to the potential. But today rice yields per acre in India and Nigeria still are only one-third those of Japan, and corn yields in Thailand and Brazil are less than one-third those of the United States. Large increases in food production are possible in these countries at far less cost than in agriculturally advanced nations if farmers are given the necessary economic incentives and the requisite inputs.

India and the United States, for example, bave about the same crop area, with many similar characteristics. If Indian yield levels equalled those of the United States, its current annual cereal production would be 230 million metric tons rather than the present total of approximately 100 million tons. If rice farmers in Bangladesh attained Japanese yield levels, rice production would jump fourfold from 10 million to 40 million tons. Brazil, by doubling its present cultivated area, could produce an additional 22 million tons of grain even if its currently low yield levels were not improved.

Concentrating efforts on expanding food production in the poor countries could reduce upward pressure on world food prices, create additional employ

ment in countries where continuously rising unemployment poses a serious threat to political stability, and raise income and improve nutrition for the poorest portion of humanity-the people living in the rural areas of developing countries. This Communique was produced by the Overseas Development Council, a nongovernmental, non-profit, non-partisan center for public education. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Overseas Development Council, its directors, officers, or staff. The author, Lester R. Brown, is a Senior Fellow on the ODC staff. The Communique may be quoted with credit to the author and to the ODC.