PDF file: Annual Report 2002/2003 - Scottish Crop Research Institute

Director’s Report
Philippines (2.9 million). The largest recipient of
immigrants was the USA with a net inflow of 16.7
million between 1970-1995, followed by Russia (4.1
million), Saudi Arabia (3.4 million), India (3.3 million),
Canada (3.3 million), Germany (2.7 million),
and France (1.4 million). In absolute terms, of
course, the greatest movements of populations occur
within countries, mainly from the countryside to the
towns and cities, reckoned to be 150 million in China
alone. Pressures arising from these movements (social
protection costs; environmental degradation; changes
to ethnic, cultural, and religious mix of a recipient
countries; modification of economic and political profiles
etc.) can create barriers to the flows of people
across national boundaries. M. Wolf of the Financial
Times considered that the economic impact of immigration
on the MDCs can be assessed in four ways.
Firstly, there is little theoretical or empirical reason to
believe that the narrowly economic benefits of immigration
will be large for the rest of society, unless the
immigrants are skilled or entrepreneurial. Secondly,
immigrants into high-income countries tend to
include large proportions of both highly skilled and
unskilled people, but relatively few semi-skilled.
Thirdly, economic benefits will fail to be realised if
the immigrants fail to work – the unemployment rate
of foreigners in 2000-2001 was about twice that of the
labour force in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France,
The Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden. Lastly, the
effectiveness of immigration in stabilising the old-age
dependency ratio (the proportion of pensioners to the
working population) is limited because immigrants
age, too. Immigration required by the EU to stabilise
its old-age dependency ratio would increase its population
to more than 1 billion by 2050, according to a
report in 2000 by the UN. For LDCs, emigration
represents a direct loss of human capital but can represent
a source of remittances. Official remittances,
deemed to be around half of total remittances, can be
ranked by the ratio of a country’s receipts to GDP.
Thus, Jordan with 21.8% of GDP, followed by
Yemen (13.6%), El Salvador (13.3%), and Jamaica
(10./7%), top the recipients listings, but in absolute
amounts, the remittances in 2000 of India ($11.6 billion,
2.5% of GDP), Mexico ($6.6 billion, 1.1% of
GDP), Turkey ($4.6 billion, 2.3% of GDP), and
Egypt ($3.7 billion, 3.8% of GDP) were the most significant.
Agriculture and Food
Global Production Global food supplies were
adversely affected by drought in Africa, Australia, and
North and South America. Crop and livestock production
in Africa were also afflicted by widespread
political instability and corruption. The global
decline in grain output, by some 78 million metric
tonnes (mmt), led to low ending stocks. In contrast,
oilseed production only fell by less than 1% and meat
output increased by 2.9%. Price increases were noted
during the year in several of the major agricultural
commodities. Global wheat production declined to
569 mmt in 2002, compared with 579 mmt in 2001,
reflecting marked reductions in output from Australia,
Argentina, Canada, and the USA, only partly compensated
for by a sharp increase of 12 mmt to 104
mmt in the European Union (EU). Coarse grain production
also fell from 887.5 mmt to 861 mmt reflecting
droughted conditions in the main producing
countries, counterbalanced by increased production in
China and several of the countries of the former
Soviet Union. Estimates of global cereal stocks for
2003-2004 by the European Commission’s
Directorate General for Agriculture support the view
that only 130 mmt of wheat and a similar level of
coarse grains will be available. Ending stocks of rice
fell to 105 mmt in 2002 compared with 132 mmt in
2001. Largely as a result of a 7% reduction in the US
soybean production, contrasting with enhanced production
elsewhere, especially in South America, world
oilseed production declined slightly in 2002 from the
previous year.
Global sugar production increased from 134 mmt in
2001 to 139 mmt in 2002. Production increases were
recorded in Brazil, China, the EU, and Russia.
Consumption, to the concern of nutritionists, dentists
and those opposed to the confectionary and much of
the food-processing industries, continued to increase,
aided by weakening prices.
Coffee also experienced low prices as global production
increased to 125 million bags, principally as a
result of enhanced production in Brazil. Cocoa
prices, however, rose to 1986 prices as the civil war in
Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s largest cocoa producer,
unsettled the markets. Non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) such as Oxfam have pointed out the
huge gulf separating the prices paid to growers and the
retail cost of the processed cocoa and coffee products,
highlighting the life-threatening vulnerability of
small-scale growers. It is a fact that virtually all producers
of agricultural commodities worldwide rarely
benefit from value-added processes in the supply
chain.
33