World agriculture towards 2030/2050: the 2012 revision - Fao

PROOF COPY
period. These projected developments in per capita food consumption in combination with the
lower population growth, suggest a further deceleration in the aggregate world food demand
for sugar: from 1.9 percent p.a. in the past (1961-2007, or 1.3 percent from 1980-2007) to 1.1
percent in 2005/07-2050.
Figure 3.13 Brazil: sugar cane, sugar and ethanol
Th. tons Sugar - Million Litres Ethanol
45 000
40 000
35 000
30 000
25 000
20 000
15 000
10 000
5 000
0
Cane used for Sugar (right) Cane used for Ethanol (right)
Prod. Sugar (left Axis) Prod. Ethanol (left)
Sugar-Net Exports (left) Prod. Sugar Cane (right Axis)
Marketing Years, starting May
Sources: Production ethanol and sugar cane to 08/09: http://www.unica.com.br; Cane Production last two years
and uses for Sugar/Ethanol: USDA/FAS/Sugar Annuals for Brazil; Sugar Production and Exports: USDA/PSD.
As a result, developing exporters that benefited from the surge in demand of the
importing developing countries and policy reforms in the developed ones may face more
limited growth prospects in the long term. The growth of their net exports will increasingly
depend on the growth of consumption in the importing developing countries which will be
less buoyant than in the past, hence also the potential for export growth from the exporting
countries (Figure 3.14).
The impact of the lower food demand growth on the world sugar crops sector may be
compensated by growing use for biofuel production. Under our “limited biofuels” scenario
use of sugar crops in sugar equivalent will increase from 15 percent of world sugar output to
27 percent in 2030 and to 24 percent in 2050. As a consequence, world production should
increase faster than world food demand, at 1.3 percent p.a. from 2005/07-2050 vs.1.1 percent.
A glimpse on prospects beyond 2019 can be obtained from the recently released projections to
2025 of FAPRI (2011) for ethanol production in Brazil (almost all the sugar cane-based
ethanol of the world in the FAPRI projections): it has an increase from 2007/09- 2019 of 122
percent, almost equal to that of OECD-FAO (2010: Table A.33) we use here, and projects a
further 27 percent increase from 2019-2025. By implication, the boost to the sugar crops
sector coming from biofuels may be weakening over time.
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
Million tons Cane
95