The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is the premier data-gathering institution in this issue area and also provides analysis and forecasts. It tends to be cautiously optimistic about global prospects based on analysis of very considerable progress in food supplies around the world (excepting Africa) over several decades. See also the FAO web site. In general FAO reports portray dietary inadequacies as a function of poverty, not physical constraints on food production.
The FAO (1995) anticipates global growth in daily per capita calorie consumption from 2720 in 1990-92 to 2900 in 2010, with consumption in developing countries rising from 2520 to 2770 over the same period. It does not see the tightening of the global market in the 1990s as a significant shift in global trends, because it attributes lower stocks and higher prices to problems in the former communist countries and policy-induced correction of surpluses in the US and Europe. At the same time, it anticipates a continued slowing of the rate of growth in global food supplies (3.0% in the 1960s, 2.3% in the 1970s, and 2.0% from 1980-92, and 1.8% in the forecast to 2010).
In an FAO report Alexandratos (1995: 131) forecasts by 2010 diets of 2170 calories per capita in sub-Saharan Africa and 2450 in South Asia, the two regions with least adequate diets, increasing to 2700 calories by 2025.
The FAO points out that 900 million people in LDCs, or 35% of population, were malnourished in 1969-91, falling to 800 million or 20% in 1988-90. They tentatively suggest a number of 680 million in 2010. They forecast a continued movement towards greater net food imports in the LDCs.
They anticipate that in the former communist countries, meat consumption levels and therefore feed grain consumption will not quickly recover to former levels, and that poultry consumption is more likely to rise than livestock consumption.
With respect to land use, they anticipate an increase of about 90 million hectares in the crop land of LDCs other than China, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America (on a contemporary cultivated base of 720 million ha). They see land for human settlements and infrastructure growing from 3% of land with agricultural potential to 4% by 2010. They anticipate growth in irrigated land at only 0.8%, relative to 2.2% in the 1970s, and 1.9% in the 1980s, slowing because of water constraints. In addition, cropping intensity (crops per year) could rise from 79-85% by 2010.
Almost all production growth will, however, come from yield increases. Average irrigated rice yields could rise from 3.7 tons/ha in LDCs to 5.2 tons by 2010 (Alexandratos, 1995: 14). Rain-fed wheat yields could rise from 1.7 to 2.1 tons and corn yields from 1.8 to 2.6 tons. Each upper value is below that obtained by the 20% of countries with highest contemporary yields.
Ocean production appears to have peaked at about 80 million tons per year, but aquaculture could increase from 12 to 15-20 million tons.
The FAO discusses issues concerning degradation of land quality (soil loss, desertification, etc.), but see those related perhaps more to poverty than to intensity of agricultural use, and therefore not destined to worsen in a world of rising incomes. Nonetheless, they point to significant important management issues.
A report written in support of World Bank analysis (Crosson and Anderson, 1992) looks out to 2030 and asks whether the world will be able to support an increase in global grain consumption of 97% relative to 1990, with 91% of the demand growth in LDCs. The authors conclude that additional land under cultivation could provide 25% of that increment in demand, that increased irrigation (given 17% of global cropland already irrigated) is unlikely to contribute much globally, but that increased knowledge (technology) probably can provide the food demanded. They are cautiously optimistic.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) operates as part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and it therefore receives support from a consortium of governments, foundations, and international organizations. Its forecasts rely in part on its International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT), a set of 35 trade-linked country or regional models treating 17 agricultural commodities. It forecasts 19% decline in the real price of cereals and 9% decline in the real price of meat between 1990 and 2020 (Rosegrant, Agcaoili-Sombila, and Perez 1995: 7). It foresees a 61% increase in wheat trade and more than a doubling in meat trade. It believes that China will obtain sufficient increases in production and efficiency of production so that grain imports will increase only to 22 million tons in 2020. East Europe and Russia will move from importer to exporter positions.
IFPRI uses the Global Land Assessment of Degradation (GLASOD) mapping to evaluate land degradation. GLASMOD identifies the greatest degradation in Africa where it affects 65% of cropland. It notes, however, that a 17% loss of land productivity over 45 years (Sherr and Yadav, 1996: 7) was more than offset by other gains in production, and anticipates a similar pattern in the future.
Although IFPRI expects global improvement in food availability, and considerable advance in countries like China, it sees virtually no improvement in food security for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa through 2020. It expects only a 30 million decline in the 184 million malnourished children under the age of five. In short, while the World Bank and FAO are quite optimistic globally, IFPRI presents a mixed future.
The Worldwatch Institute, under the leadership of Lester Brown (1995 and 1996), tends to produce the most pessimistic forecasts of global agricultural prospects, directly challenging the optimism of the World Bank and FAO. The pessimism is based both in belief of continued land degradation and continued pressure of population on the agricultural system. Brown points out that global grain production per capita peaked in 1984 (Brown, 1996: 36), that fertilizer use per capita is now declining, that ocean fisheries and global grazing lands are now used to near full capacity, and that irrigated land per capita peaked in 1979 (1996: 74). In partial rebuttal, Alexandratos (1995: 42) points out that per capita production has continued to grow in LDCs, where really needed, falling in the more-developed countries that have been fighting food surpluses.
Brown is especially pessimistic about China where he sees land available for crops being converted to other uses with industrialization (there was a decline of 5.6% between 1990 and 1994). Brown (1995) also points to changing diets as incomes increase and people demand more meat. Together these factors will push China towards increased imports and will put, according to Brown, much pressure on global food markets. He foresees Chinese demand on world markets in 2030 of between 300 and 640 million tons. Other analysts see the change in diet as a positive development for the Chinese and believe that there is much potential to meet the demand for Chinese imports, for instance through improved agriculture in the former Soviet Union, once a bread-basket for Europe.