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

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Such optimism notwithstanding, achieving significant declines in the numbers
undernourished may prove to be a more arduous task than commonly thought. A combination
of higher national average food consumption and reduced inequality 26 can have a significant
impact on the proportion of the population undernourished. However, when population
growth is added, such gains do not necessarily translate into commensurate declines in the
absolute numbers. In this context, it is noted that WFS halving target, being set in absolute
terms (numbers undernourished), is much more difficult to reach than the MDG1 target which
is set in terms of halving the proportion undernourished, not the absolute numbers.
Monitoring progress towards the WFS halving target will always show countries with high
population growth rates as making less progress than countries with low population growth
rates, even when both make the same progress towards the MDG1 target. Finally, an
additional factor why progress may be slow is the increase in the share of adults in total
population. This raises the average MDERs of the countries and, ceteris paribus, contributes
to making the incidence of undernourishment higher that it would otherwise be.
In conclusion, in many countries the decline in the numbers undernourished will be
slow. Where population growth rates are high the numbers undernourished may increase by
2015. This prospect notwithstanding, the significant improvements implied by the projections
should not be underestimated: the part of the developing country population living in
countries with relatively low incidence of undernourishment (under 5 percent) would increase
from the present 645 million (13 percent of the total of the developing countries) to 3330
million (49 percent) in 2030; and the part living in countries with high incidence (over 20
percent) would fall drastically from 40 percent to 4 percent. The shift of China from the 5-10
percent class to the one of under 5 percent, and of India from the over 20 percent to the 10-20
percent class are instrumental in these prospective developments. More details are given in
Figure 2.9
26 Food consumption per capita, being a bounded variable (a rich person can eat/waste so much food and a poor
person must consume a minimum amount in order to survive), does not offer as much scope for increase in
inequality as income. The indices of inequality of access to food are generally well below those of income. For
example, for 100 countries with Gini coefficient data from surveys for both income and food (admittedly of
different years and qualities) the simple Gini average of the income is 0.39 and that of food 0.14 (data in
http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/food-security-statistics/en/). For these reasons, the increase in national
averages of food consumption beyond certain levels is bound to be accompanied by declines in inequality. We
take this prospect on board by assuming that countries (with significantly higher projected kcal/person/day) will
have lower food inequality in the future. How much lower depends on the progress they make in raising their
average kcal/person/day, as follows: Future CV=Present CV times (Present kcal/Future kcal), subject to future
CV=> 0.20.
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