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

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Developed countries -0.1 -0.3 0.0 0.4 0.2 0.3
Developing countries. with under 2700 0.7 0.7 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.6
Developing countries. with over 2700 2.3 2.5 2.7 0.7 0.4 0.5
idem, excl. China 1.1 1.1 1.1 0.5 0.3 0.4
Production (all food and non-food commodities)
World 2.1 2.1 2.2 1.3 0.8 1.1
Developing countries 3.5 3.5 3.4 1.6 0.9 1.3
idem, excl. China 2.9 2.9 2.9 1.8 1.2 1.5
Sub-Saharan Africa 2.7 3.2 3.1 2.5 2.1 2.3
Near East/North Africa 3.0 2.8 2.6 1.6 1.2 1.4
Latin America and the Caribbean 2.9 2.9 3.5 1.7 0.8 1.3
South Asia 3.0 2.9 2.5 1.9 1.3 1.6
East Asia 4.2 4.2 4.1 1.3 0.5 0.9
idem, excl. China 3.1 2.7 2.7 1.5 0.9 1.3
Developed countries 0.6 0.2 0.3 0.7 0.3 0.5
Concerning production, at global level sufficient production potential can be developed
for meeting the expected increases in effective demand in the course of the next five decades.
As noted, the required growth rate of global production will be lower than in the past. Even
this growth may not materialize unless promoted through active interventions. This requires
continued support to agricultural research and policies and other conditions such as the
provision of education, credit and infrastructure, to make it profitable for farmers to expand
production capacity. That there is scope for increasing global production is not to say that all
people will be food-secure in the future. Far from it, as Chapter 2 has shown
The interaction between food security and food production potential is very much a
local problem in poor and agriculturally-dependent societies. Many situations exist where
production potential is limited and a good part of the population depends on such poor
agricultural resources for food and more general livelihood. This is the case, for instance, of
semi-arid areas with poor access to technologies and infrastructures. Unless local agriculture
is developed and/or other income earning opportunities open up, the food insecurity
determined by limited local production potential will persist, even in the middle of potential
plenty at the world level. The need to develop local agriculture in such situations as the
condition sine qua non for improved food security cannot be overemphasized.
3.2 Cereals
In our previous work we highlighted that the growth rate of global demand for cereals shows
a progressive fall until 2007. Our earlier projections concluded that such deceleration would
continue, but that the global expected absolute increases still represented a significant
quantum jump to 3 billion tonnes by 2050.
Our new projections confirm the 3 billion tonnes for 2050 – an increase of 940 million
from the base year 2005/07. Almost all the increases in the consumption of cereals will come
from the developing countries, particularly after 2020 when use of cereals for biofuels is
assumed to peak at 180 million tonnes.
The developing countries surpassed developed ones in total cereals consumption in the
early 1980s and account now for 61 percent of world consumption, a share that will increase
to 67 percent by 2050. They also surpassed them in total production in the early 1990s: they
now account for 56 percent of world production and the share will increase to 60 percent in
2050.
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