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

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PROOF COPY endowments. Since they have to depend predominantly on own production for food supplies, it is difficult to visualize a situation whereby they raise national average per capita food consumption to levels that ensure that no segment of their population will have per capita food below minimum requirements for good nutrition. As all statements about possible future states of the world, our projections are subject to many uncertainties. Some of them, specific to food security outcomes, all referring to downside risks, are worth listing here. • Successive revisions of the population projections suggest that some negative aspects of population growth may be more serious than incorporated in this study. It is not so much that projected global population may turn out to be higher (9.3 billion in 2050 in the 2010 release of the UN projections) than the 9.15 billion assumed in the projections used here (from the 2008 release). The additional food required could be easily produced globally. The problem is that all of the increment and some more (206 million) originates in upward revisions in the projected population of sub-Saharan Africa. This does not augur well for the food security prospects of the region and the world. The improvements projected in this study may turn out to be too optimistic if the new population projections materialized. • Climate change may also affect adversely the prospect of achieving the food security improvements projected in this study. Most climate models indicate that the agricultural potential of the developing countries may be more adversely affected than the world average. The high dependence of several of them on agriculture makes them particularly vulnerable in this respect. Studies that have looked into this matter provide very disparate answers ranging from catastrophic to mildly pessimistic (see Alexandratos, 2011b for a critical evaluation of such findings as of 2009). • Finally, the increased integration between agriculture and the energy market fostered by the growing use of crops in biofuels production represents a potential disrupting element in the future. Much of the biofuels production in some of the major producing countries is currently driven by mandates and subsidies. However, should economic realities dictate and energy prices increase significantly, biofuels may become competitive without support policies. The option that biofuels could expand only into land not suitable for food crop production is not tenable in an environment of laissez-faire markets. Given the disproportionately large size of the energy markets relative to those for food and the stronger economic position of those demanding more energy vs. those needing more food, care must be taken to protect access to food by vulnerable population groups in the face of rising food prices. At the same time, it must be recognized that judiciously expanded biofuels sector has the potential of benefiting development in countries with abundant resources suitable for the production of biofuel feedstocks. What’s next? Beyond 2050 Imagine you are in 2050 and the projections we have presented have come true. How should we speculate about future developments, say to 2100? Can our conclusions for the projection period to 2050 provide some clues as to what may be in store beyond 2050? Looking at global magnitudes first, the slowdown in world population growth was a major reason why we concluded that there will be lower growth in world agriculture in the period to 2050 compared with the past. The same demographic projections employed in this paper – 2008 release, Medium Variant – suggest that the slowdown is to accelerate beyond 19
PROOF COPY 2050, reaching a peak of 9.43 billion in 2075 and then decline to 9.2 billion in 2100. After 2050 many countries will enter a phase of population decline. Of the 110 countries/groups in our study, eight are projected to have in 2050 lower population than in the base year 2005/07; this number will increase to 47 countries between 2050 and 2100, and will include giants like India and China, along with the Russian Federation, Japan, Brazil, and Indonesia. In the more recent demographic projections (UN, 2011) world population would reach 10.1 billion in 2100. There will still be 51 of our countries/groups with lower population in 2100 than in 2050, including the large ones mentioned above. However, many other countries are projected to have in 2050 and 2100 populations well above those of the earlier projections of 2008 used in this study (see below). In any case, the increments in world population between 2050 and 2100 would be immensely smaller than those of the preceding 50 years. By implication, the rate at which population pressures will be building on world agriculture would continue to diminish over time. The other major factor contributing to the global slowdown of agriculture in our projections to 2050 is the gradual attainment by a growing share of world population of medium/high per capita food consumption levels beyond which the scope for further increases is small. We started with a global average of 2770 kcal/person/day in 2005/07. Country by country and commodity by commodity projections indicated that this quantity could rise to 3070 kcal/person/day by 2050. We can safely assume that the slowdown effect will be stronger after 2050. Such effect on aggregate agriculture will be reinforced by the prospect that most countries experiencing population declines are those which in 2050 are projected to show high levels of per capita food consumption. For example, one person less in a country consuming 80 kg of meat per capita generates a deficit of 80 kg in global demand, which ceteris paribus is only partly compensated by 3 additional persons in countries with 20 kg per capita. We may conclude that for the world as a whole the pressures on agriculture to produce more food for the growing population will increase beyond 2050 by much less than indicated in our projections for the period to 2050. In order to get an idea of the magnitudes involved we extended in a rough and ready manner and for selected variables the projections from 2050 to 2080, the year just past the peak of world population according to the 2008 UN population projections. It results that global agricultural production would need to grow at 0.4 percent per year from 2050 to 2080, i.e. less than half the growth rate projected for the period 2005/07- 2050 (Table 1.1). 20
Page 1 and 2: WORLD AGRICULTURE TOWARDS 2030/2050
Page 3 and 4: Acknowledgements PROOF COPY This pa
Page 5 and 6: Boxes PROOF COPY Box 1.1 Measuring
Page 7 and 8: PROOF COPY Figure A.2.1.6 India: fo
Page 9 and 10: PROOF COPY producing countries rema
Page 11 and 12: PROOF COPY may fall from 2.3 billio
Page 13 and 14: PROOF COPY Minimum Dietary Energy R
Page 15 and 16: PROOF COPY Concerning the main prod
Page 17 and 18: PROOF COPY vegetable oil imports fo
Page 19 and 20: PROOF COPY constraints can be signi
Page 21 and 22: PROOF COPY Figure 1.8 Irrigated are
Page 23 and 24: PROOF COPY Figure 1.9 World cereals
Page 25: PROOF COPY for both food and non-fo
Page 29 and 30: PROOF COPY 436 million in the over
Page 31 and 32: PROOF COPY CHAPTER 2 PROSPECTS FOR
Page 33 and 34: PROOF COPY Figure 2.1 kcal/person/d
Page 35 and 36: PROOF COPY The FAO estimates of und
Page 37 and 38: PROOF COPY by people. In particular
Page 39 and 40: PROOF COPY production potential. Th
Page 41 and 42: PROOF COPY Table: Growth in Populat
Page 43 and 44: PROOF COPY (Figure2.6), at 7.4 bill
Page 45 and 46: PROOF COPY Table 2.4 GDP assumption
Page 47 and 48: PROOF COPY Modest reductions in the
Page 49 and 50: PROOF COPY Such optimism notwithsta
Page 51 and 52: PROOF COPY in North Africa have hig
Page 53 and 54: PROOF COPY (which in our data appea
Page 55 and 56: PROOF COPY The other major commodit
Page 57 and 58: PROOF COPY Table 2.6 Changes in the
Page 59 and 60: PROOF COPY • Despite this slow pa
Page 61 and 62: PROOF COPY undernourishment and the
Page 63 and 64: PROOF COPY commodities and waste. F
Page 65 and 66: PROOF COPY Where does this leave us
Page 67 and 68: PROOF COPY Figure A.2.1.6 shows the
Page 69 and 70: PROOF COPY cereals for ethanol 41 .
Page 71 and 72: PROOF COPY consumption was heavily
Page 73 and 74: PROOF COPY Figure 3.2 Net agricultu
Page 75 and 76: PROOF COPY It is noted, however, th
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PROOF COPY Figure 3.4 Per capita fo
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PROOF COPY 2005/07. 45 Not all of t
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PROOF COPY Table 3.3 Net trade bala
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PROOF COPY growth in the ruminant s
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PROOF COPY Table 3.4 Meat: aggregat
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PROOF COPY countries in per capita
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PROOF COPY associated with such lar
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PROOF COPY Figure 3.8 World feed us
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PROOF COPY The production of biodie
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PROOF COPY the exports of the two m
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3.5 Roots, tubers and plantains 3.5
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PROOF COPY the two factors that mak
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PROOF COPY Net exports from develop
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PROOF COPY Figure 3.14 Sugar net tr
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PROOF COPY Climate change In evalua
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PROOF COPY Table 4.1 Increases in p
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PROOF COPY involved are considerabl
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PROOF COPY cropping intensities (6
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PROOF COPY No data exist on total h
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PROOF COPY Box 4.2 Agro-ecological
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PROOF COPY under cultivation. It is
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PROOF COPY products facing finite n
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PROOF COPY place in sub-Saharan Afr
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PROOF COPY The bulk of arable land
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PROOF COPY Figure 4.7 Area equipped
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PROOF COPY The developed countries
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PROOF COPY 4.2.5 Irrigation water r
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PROOF COPY harvested irrigated area
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PROOF COPY Figure 4.10 Annual growt
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PROOF COPY million ha at an average
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PROOF COPY producers 81 are about h
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PROOF COPY the often unfavourable a
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PROOF COPY Table 4.15 Fertilizer co
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PROOF COPY under way for some time,
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PROOF COPY Livestock production is
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Argentina Bolivia (Plurinational St
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Wheat Rice Maize Barley Millet Sorg
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PROOF COPY and yields by irrigated
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PROOF COPY References Alexandratos,
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PROOF COPY FAO (1996), Food, Agricu
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PROOF COPY Ma, Hengyun, Jikun Huang
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PROOF COPY van der Mensbrugghe, D.,
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