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

PROOF COPY
in North Africa have high shares of direct consumption of cereals and very small ones of root
crops. The opposite is true for several countries in sub-Saharan Africa, like those mentioned
above. However, sub-Saharan Africa also has countries at the other extreme (e.g. Mali, Niger,
Senegal, Burkina Faso, Lesotho, etc): over 60 percent of calories coming from cereals and
only 2-3 percent from root crops. The role of the prevailing agro-ecological characteristics
conditioning the production patterns is overwhelming as a key determinant of what people
eat, particularly when incomes per capita and food consumption levels are low and high
shares of the population depend on agriculture for a living.
Per capita food use of cereals 28 seems to have peaked in the mid-1990s and declined
slowly thereafter. This is true for the world as a whole as well as for the aggregate of the
developing countries. This of course raises the question why should the average of the
developing countries be levelling off when so many of them are far from having reached
adequate levels of food consumption. In practice, the peak and subsequent decline reflects
primarily developments in China and, to a smaller extent, India. China’s consumption of
cereals declined while total calories and those derived from other foods were increasing.
India’s decline was accompanied by falls in total kcal/person/year which remained very low, a
phenomenon often referred to in the literature as a “paradox” or “puzzle” (see Annex 2.1 for
more details). These two countries account for 37 percent of world population and for 47
percent of that of the developing countries. Therefore trends in their values influence
decisively the global totals. Excluding these two large countries, the average for the
developing countries has continued to grow, albeit very slowly. Figure 2.10 illustrates.
Figure 2.10 Cereals consumption (direct food only) in kg/person/year
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
148 146
1969/71
1979/81
162 158 151
1989/91
1999/01
2005/07
127
1969/71
158
1979/81
176 175
1989/91
1999/01
161
2005/07
28 Food use of cereals includes the grain equivalent of all cereals-based food products, including products like
beer produced from barley and sugar-substitute sweeteners produced from maize, e.g. corn syrups.
140
1969/71
152 160 160 155
144 152 151 153 154
India China Developing Developing excl. India
and China
1979/81
1989/91
1999/01
2005/07
1969/71
1979/81
1989/91
1999/01
2005/07
44