Feeding the Ten Billion Part 12

FEEDING THE TEN BILLION

PLANTS AND POPULATION GROWTH

L.T. EVANS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS                  1998

PART XII

Chapter 11: What the World Eats Now

11.1 Introduction: food for thought about food

• In this chapter we look at the several aspects of the present world food situation and begin to wonder where we from here.
• Despite a doubling of world population since 1960, the food supply per head for the world has increased, calories by 13%, protein by 8%, and both by even greater margins in the developing countries as a whole.
• The proportions of malnourished people and of underweight children in them have fallen. Yet there remains an unacceptably high number of the absolutely poor and hungry, up to 800 million or so, in a world which is producing enough food for all but feeding almost half of its cereal grain production to animals.
• In the Bengal famine of 1943, the Ethiopian famines of 1973 and 1982, and the Bangladesh famine of 1974 there was no decline in food output or availability per head, indeed in the Bangladesh famine these were higher than in the preceding and following years. But the food which could not be paid for locally went to other markets.
• While many of those with low incomes have benefited from the fall in cereal prices in recent years, the absolutely poor may not have. Food aid is equivalent to only about 1% of cereal production by developing countries, and doesn’t solve the problem.
• Hunger amid plenty is only one of the confusing elements of the present food scene.
• The developed countries may well retreat from their highly subsidized surpluses of grain, and the urge for self-sufficiency in food and feed production may reassert itself in many developing countries.
• Another uncertain element in the present scene involves the tradeoffs between the intensification of agriculture and the conservation of the environment and its resources.
• Another confusing element is the recent trend towards disinvestments in publicly-supported and publicly-available agricultural research in developed countries, associated in part with the accumulation of surpluses.

 

11.2 Food production and our global diet

• The stomach contents of an Iron Age man buried in a Danish bog showed that his last meals included at least 60 plant species, many now considered weeds but also barley and linseed, and no meat.
• Estimates suggest that, for the world as a whole, 84% of the dry weight of the world’s food derives directly from plants, closely comparable with the proportion of dietary calories estimated from the world food survey.
• A large fraction of the remaining 16% from animal products is based on feed production by maize, soybean, wheat, barley, sorghum, cassava, sweet potato, cottonseed, etc.
• To a far greater extent than is generally recognized in developed countries, a remarkably small number of crop plants provides most of what the world eats. Among these the cereal staples are pre-eminent.
• The two approaches to assessing the global food supply agree on the overwhelming role of crop plants in supplying us with energy, as well as with two thirds of our protein directly and most of the rest indirectly.
• With economic development there is usually a sharp rise in the proportion of animal products in the diet. 60% of dietary protein comes from animal products in the developed countries compared with only 22% in developing ones, reflected in the rising proportion of maize used for feed as national income rises.
• Over the next 20 years or so, cereal consumption per head in the developing countries is projected to increase by over 2% per year, due to rising demand for animal foods rather than for greater direct consumption.
• The production of cereals per head in the world, which rose from 277 kg per year in 1948-52 to 370 kg per year in 1976 has not increased since then, indeed it has decreased, and cereal production may be struggling to keep up with population growth for some time yet.
• Across the three world food surveys, between 1961 and 1981, the main changes have been declines in the contributions by legumes and root/tuber crops, matched by increases from vegetable oils, sugar and vegetables and fruits.

 

11.3 Regional variations in food supply

• The proposition that ‘the earth is one but the world is not’ is nowhere more apparent than in our food and its abundance. Pronounced regional and national differences in diet remain as a result of differences in agricultural and culinary traditions, in soil and climate and in stage of economic development.
• The nutritional fate of our fellow human beings varies by region, by country, by district, by year, by tradition, by gender and by income. Malthus stalks through much of Africa while Boserup is at work in China.

 

11.4 Hunger, malnutrition and poverty

• Hunger and plenty co-exist today as they have throughout human history, but with less reason. The difference is that enough food for all is now produced in the world, even in times of local famine, yet the poorest of the poor, up to 800 million of them, still suffer chronic under-nutrition.
• Hunger and poverty are closely linked at the bottom end of the income distribution curve, both between countries and within them
• Estimates of the scale of the problem, and of progress on it, vary to some extent between various surveys, depending on the criteria used.
• The proportion of chronically undernourished people in the developing countries is falling, but it is still high in Asia and highest in sub-Saharan Africa.
• The proportion of malnourished children was estimated to be about 34% in 1990 – and almost 60% in south Asia – and is expected to be about 24% by AD 2020.
• Although protein-calorie deficiency is the most widespread form of malnutrition, others are also important, as are the regional and climatic dimensions.
• Regional famine is a less predictable, more sporadic and dramatic nutritional stress. Famines attract the attention of the media and emergency aid, which chronic food insecurity does not.
• It is poverty that makes famine possible, and it is the root causes of poverty that must be attacked if famine is to be prevented.
• In Our Common Future the Brundtland Commission wrote: “We recognize that poverty, environmental degradation and population growth are inextricably related and that none of these fundamental problems can be successfully addressed in isolation.’
• By focusing on the reduction of poverty and chronic undernutrition in the developing countries, which is within our grasp, the problems of population growth and environmental degradation could become more manageable.

 

11.5 Animal food and feed

• Two common targets of concern about modern agriculture are its heavy dependence on inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation on the one hand, and the great extent to which our staple crops are used for animal feed on the other.
• For the world as a whole, about 44% of cereal production is used to feed animals, three quarters of it in the developed countries.
• In a world where 800 million people are chronically undernourished, this high proportion is a frequent cause of outrage. It also suggests that ten billion people could already be fed, given equitable distribution.
• Consumption of meat in the developing countries is increasing by 5% per year, and that of milk by 4%.
• Besides reflecting dietary wants, if not needs, there are several advantages to increasing animal production in developing countries. For many small farmers raising livestock is an important source of income and employment and an effective use of brans and oilseed meals.
• The escalating consumption of food of animal origin in developing countries means that the increase in crop production must exceed that in population, enhancing the need to raise yields.
• Sarma estimates an average ratio of feed input to food output by weight of 2-3 for chicken meat, 4-6 for intensively fed pig meat and even higher for lot-fed beef.
• The large regional and national differences in calorie, protein and fat supplies per head clearly relate to average income.
• For the world as a whole two thirds of all maize and other coarse grains produced are used for feed, this proportion rising to about 95% for sorghum in the developed countries and in Latin America.
• During the enclosure of the English commons the dispossessed commoners used the slogan ‘Sheep eat men’. A similar complaint could be made today, as cattle, pigs, poultry and even fish eat an increasing fraction of our staple foods.
• The great proportion of the world’s undernourished poor live in countries where food of animal origin constitutes a very small proportion of the average diet, where food production is already not keeping up with population growth, and where the ability to import and distribute food to the undernourished is very limited.

 

11.6 Food trade, aid and stocks

• Until World War II the tide of grain flowed from the colonies to the capitals of empire, but since then it has reversed direction. Although the developing countries comprise 77% of the world population, they produce only 62% of its supply of cereals.
• This tide of grain is projected to flow even more strongly by 2020 AD, with one sixth of the production in developed countries furnishing one eighth of the consumption in developing ones.
• The important conclusion is that, despite the increasing dependence of developing countries on imports of wheat and feed grains, the adequacy of food supplies remains largely dependent on national and local production, and on their ability to keep up with population growth.
• When famine strikes, food aid can be of crucial significance, provided it actually reaches the starving people.
• Changes in the end of year world stocks of grain appear in the news whenever they get lower than usual.
• The important concern when grain stocks reach low levels is not that the world is running out of grain but that the rise in prices needed to provide the incentive for farmers to restore stocks to a higher level will put food out of reach of many of the poor in developing countries.

 

11.7 Some projections into the future

• Who in 1960 would have foreseen that the combination of dwarf cereals, cheap nitrogenous fertilizers, new herbicides and investment in irrigation would have such prolonged and synergistic effects on food production?
• Who can know what rate of improvement in crop yields to assign to various regions over the next 20-50 years? Yet small differences in these assumptions can lead to projections with very different consequences over such time intervals.
• Projections are not predictions and the differences between the three projections highlight the problems of looking ahead even to a population of seven billion, let alone eight or ten billion.
• The main concern of the authors is that the tide in the flow of grain will still not have turned, and that the contrast between the two worlds, the haves and the have-nots, will remain almost as strong as it is now, with little improvement in the food security of many developing countries.

 

Chapter 12: Feeding the Ten Billion