New York Times: A Global Need for Grain That Farms Can't Fill
Everywhere, the cost of food is rising sharply. Whether the world is in for a long period of continued increases has become one of the most urgent issues in economics.
Many factors are contributing to the rise, but the biggest is runaway demand. In recent years, the world’s developing countries have been growing about 7 percent a year, an unusually rapid rate by historical standards.
The high growth rate means hundreds of millions of people are, for the first time, getting access to the basics of life, including a better diet. That jump in demand is helping to drive up the prices of agricultural commodities.
Farmers the world over are producing flat-out. American agricultural exports are expected to increase 23 percent this year to $101 billion, a record. The world’s grain stockpiles have fallen to the lowest levels in decades.
“Everyone wants to eat like an American on this globe,” said Daniel W. Basse of the AgResource Company, a Chicago consultancy. “But if they do, we’re going to need another two or three globes to grow it all.”
As to that last comment, Basse assumes an unchanged state of agricultural technology and productivity and projects into the future. Note this graph I posted about cropland use in the US a while back.
The US accomplished the above with no net increase in land used for crops and ended up with a great surplus for export. Globally, land conversion to cropland accelerated with population growth worldwide until about 1960. Since then, the net conversion to cropland has almost leveled out. (I'm unsure about the recent impact of ethanol corn demands.) Many places have not even begun to implement existing technologies, and poor infrastructure still leads to high levels of spoilage and waste of food that does make it to market. It isn't all about the quantity of land.
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