Future Dimensions Of World Food And Population

Richard G. Woods

• Éditeur: CRC Press
• Année: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429724381
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Scienze biologiche
• Sous-sujet: Biologia

Is it possible to feed those who now are hungry in the world in addition to the billions of people who will be born by the end of the century? Or are we headed for an inevitable Malthusian catastrophe because the task is impossible? What can developing countries do to increase agricultural self-reliance? What population dynamics accompany the transition from high birth and death rates in developing countries to low birth and death rates? What research can aid the struggle to provide food to the world's masses? These and other questions are explored by an array of experts who participated in the Congressional Roundtable on World Food and Population during 1979-80. They offer this collection of papers in the spirit of optimism about the future and about the U.S. role in international development.

Section 1
The Global Problem of Balancing Population and Food

Introduction

The idea that feeding people adequately constitutes a goal of almost universal acceptability is central to the institutions and programs intended to alleviate world hunger and stimulate food self-reliance. Certainly the more difficult problems of international peace-keeping, economic progress, and general cooperation would seem to be beyond reach, as Maurice Williams points out, if we cannot find ways to cooperate in preventing hunger and ensuring an adequate food supply for the people of the world. Civilization itself rests upon reasonable assurances that such basic necessities as food will be available for human groups.

However, the problem of balancing population needs with food production is not well-understood, even among those whose humanitarian impulses urge them to actively contribute to the solution of world food difficulties. There are no "quick fixes" standing ready to be employed at the last minute to ensure the continuity of food supply to hungry people. While emergency food programs are essential measures to prevent starvation and massive malnutrition, they do not alter the food production and distribution structure in ways which will ultimately prevent crises. Persons seeking to build a better world food system must first understand the nature of the problem. Of necessity we turn for the requisite insights to those with skill and experience in international development.

Maurice Williams begins his observations with "the great humanitarian vision of a world without hunger" as reflected in the recommendations of the 1974 World Food Conference held in Rome. Williams gives us the details of progress and prospects since 1974 as a means of introducing the international dimensions of the world food and population problem. The cause of rising food deficits in the developing countries, he indicates, is the rate of increase in the demand for food, which arises from a high rate of population growth coupled with a high-income elasticity of demand for food. In searching for supply-and-demand solutions, Williams describes the nature of the population dimension, the actions which developing countries can take to increase food production, the problem of malnutrition as it is related to the effective distribution of food, and the need for increased investment. Recommendations for the international community and for the United States conclude his comments.

David Hopper sketches the outline of the world food and population situation in numerical terms, paying special attention to the nature of the demand for food, the course of population growth, and the prospects for increasing food production to meet world demand. His description of the dynamics of population change is quite helpful in understanding the potential influence of population and development policies. He finds recent population trends encouraging. Like Maurice Williams, Hopper is optimistic about the world's food-producing capabilities. In the peasant farmers of the underdeveloped country, he finds willing learners and producers awaiting the right mix of incentives, institutional support, and technical help to increase productivity. Furthermore, he finds hope for the future in the experience of the past thirty-five years during which period no major famine was experienced due to man's ability to distribute surplus food to those in need. The problem of expanding world food production, he believes, lies in the social, economic, and political institutions of man, not in the absence of technical capacity.

Lester Brown stresses the difficulties of expanding food supplies when cropland throughout the world is decreasing. His message is that agricultural land can no longer be treated as an inexhaustible source of land for industry, urbanization, and the energy sector. Brown believes that existing cropland is at the limits of productivity now, and therefore the prospects for increasing world food production in the foreseeable future are not favorable. He argues for the adoption of land-use planning and management, but acknowledges that this solution most often is incompatible with existing social structures and therefore difficult for governments to establish.

Common to the papers in this section is the expression of concern that human institutions, particularly political institutions, need strengthening to meet the challenges inherent in feeding the world.

1
The Nature of the World Food and Population Problem

Maurice J. Williams

Vision of a World without Hunger the Response of the World Food Conference

The problem of hunger and malnutrition has long plagued the human race with recurring famines during periods of political upheaval and food shortages induced by natural disasters. Concern that population explosion might outpace the production of food was seriously considered as early as 1625 by Francis Bacon. This concern was further developed by Malthus in the early 19th century. Whether a balance can be maintained between food production and the rising demand for food has become one of the major questions of our time.

Several recent writers have feared a major catastrophe for the human race in what they see as a finite world with a given stock of resources being depleted by ever larger numbers of people. Others, however, regard the great scientific advances of this century and the enhanced economic capability to produce, process, and distribute food — as well as the effects of improved living standards on reducing birthrate — as opening the prospect that hunger and malnutrition can largely be banished from the earth.

It is pointed out that the world now produces more than enough food to feed adequately all of its people, and that in some of the developed areas of the world food production is restrained as a matter of policy to avoid the disincentive effects of oversupply. Already, it can be said that the large-scale, devastating famines of earlier times can be greatly alleviated, if not avoided, because of worldwide communication and transport systems which permit the mobilization of food from surplus areas to meet the emergency needs of populations afflicted by drought and other disasters. The Irish potato famine in the last century which sent millions to the New World and caused terrible suffering from starvation could not happen today. Further, recent studies have confirmed that there is a large technical and economic potential for increasing food production in the developing regions of the world, and that the lines of required development for the realization of this potential are reasonably well understood.

This great humanitarian vision of a world without hunger, as a central objective of our civilization in the last quarter of the 20th century, was embodied in the Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition, adopted by the World Food Conference meeting in Rome in 1974. The call for international cooperation to free the world from hunger and malnutrition is one that understandably engages the solidarity of the United Nations. At the Sixth Special Session of the General Assembly in New York, also in 1974, a great social and economic revolution was launched, a revolution which declared that the poor of the world had a right to share more equitably in the bounty of the world's resources and the fruits of development. The hope of the poor of the world for a new international economic order has since inflamed and challenged the deliberations of all nations, a challenge comparable in many ways to the earlier call in the political life of the United States for a "new deal for all Americans."

One is forced to conclude that if the community of nations cannot work cooperatively together on a problem so universally well-understood as food and the need to eradicate hunger as a central element of a new international order for all people, then there is little hope that the nations of the world can deal effectively with other common problems for the maintenance of world peace and economic advancement.

As often happens in human affairs, agreement to strive for a world without hunger was born of crisis, the great food crisis of 1972-73 when adverse weather brought combined crop failures in India, China, and the Soviet Union which, when combined with the drought in the Sahel of Africa, all contributed to two successive years of food production shortfalls. World food-grain reserves were dramatically reduced to less than a month's supply, and there was a worldwide scramble for food which was partly to meet immediate needs and partly speculative. The price of food increased over threefold in international markets. Many food producing countries limited access to their markets. Pood aid for poor countries dwindled from earlier high levels, even as the need for food grew more acute. In this panic situation there was a near breakdown in international cooperation as each nation looked to its own advantage, and the weak and the poor were left to shift for themselves. The consequences were tragic. High food prices can be seen by those who have the means as an effective way for allocating scarce supplies, but high prices act as a regressive and grim tax on the poor. The results were that many of the world's people encountered deprivation, health damage, and death from the shortage of food in the first half of this decade.

Those most at risk in times of major crop shortages are an estimated one billion people in some forty low-income, food-deficit countries — countries which have become increasingly dependent on external supplies for their principal food of cereals. Most of these people live on the margin of subsistence, spending over half of their incomes on food. For them dramatic shifts in the supply and price of food create immediate problems of hunger and malnutrition. Even when food supplies overall are adequate, it is estimated that over 400 million people in the low-income countries are chronically hungry and malnourished. A large number of the hungry are the children of families too poor to purchase the food they need. These children suffer substantial physical and mental damage from malnourishment and are unable to lead full and productive lives.

The 1974 World Food Conference, meeting under the pall of dire predictions that a crowded world would be unable to feed its growing population, adopted objectives for cooperative global action which constitute a comprehensive world food policy. Specifically, the Conference adopted resolutions for:

• -- safeguarding populations affected by drought and disaster from the fearful consequences of inadequate food supplies;
• -- increasing food production in countries where it is most needed;
• -- broadening the effective distribution of food through measures for improving trade, consumption, and nutrition; and
• -- building a better system of world food security which can avoid the disruptively wide swings in food prices, such as happened so dramatically in 1972-74.

The Conference called on developing countries to give higher priority to rural development and to the role of small farmers for meeting the food needs of poorer people. Successful rural development was linked, in effect, to the levelling off of high population growth. The Conference endorsed programs "to achieve a desirable balance between population and food supply" and emphasized the role of women as partners in food production, improved nutrition, and in decisions on the size of families.

The World Food Conference also called on developed countries to increase their assistance to low-income countries not only by more effective financial and technical aid but also by a redirection of economic policies which in the past had tended to depress development in economically weaker countries. These policies included economically unjustified restrictions against the exports of less-developed countries and policies for disposal of food surpluses which had the effect of depressing indigenous food production. In effect, the developed countries were asked to use their superior economic and technical strength to underpin the food security of poorer countries and to help them realize their potentials for stepped-up food production and development.

Thus, the World Food Conference dealt with the fundamentals of a multidimensional world food policy and produced a fair degree of agreement on its major elements. However, most of the specifics of how these objectives were to be achieved were left to future negotiations and to a ministerial-level World Food Council as a new institutional means for mobilizing support, for monitoring policies and programs, and generally for ensuring the coherence of overall efforts. (1)

The essential decisions for alleviating hunger and malnutrition in the world are primarily political, and only secondarily related to natural resource and technical factors. This is because, as most authorities have agreed, there are no major physical or technological limits to the expansion of the world food supply to meet the likely growth of population over the next three to four decades. Studies by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and others have pointed out that land resources are more than adequate and that the necessary investments can be made available to assure inputs of such essentials as water, fertilizers, research, and related extension services. However, it cannot be assumed that, without special efforts on the part of governments, the rate of increase in the production of food will realize these physical potentials and be adequate to world demand, nor that development will take place in regions where the food needs are greatest. The most difficult constraints to be overcome concern the adaptability of sociopolitical structures — within and among countries — to realize the economic and technical potentials for eradicating world hunger and malnutrition. It is for these reasons that the work of the World Food Council is seen as being primarily oriented to political action and coordination within the framework of agreed world food objectives.

Progress and Prospects Since 1974

The progress of the last four years has been mixed. Good harvests for three successive years have contributed to the rebuilding of food stocks and a presently improved world food situation.

There has been increased investment in food production in developing countries, and governments have begun to give greater attention to the longer-term food needs of their peoples, but the efforts to date are still far less than adequate to the needs. A new International Fund for Agricultural Development, as recommended by the World Food Conference, has recently begun operations. The flow of development aid to agriculture has doubled in real terms from about $2 billion in 1973 to about $4 billion in 1977. Most of this increase has been through the programs of the international organizations, particularly the World Bank, and far too little has been contributed by national bilateral aid programs which still represent 70 percent of total development assistance. The level of development assistance for agriculture needs to be substantially increased in the next few years, responding to stepped-up efforts in investment allocations by the food-deficit developing countries themselves.

Mechanisms within the United Nations for emergency food relief have been strengthened. Contributions in 1978 nearly met a United Nations-administered 500,000 ton Emergency Grain Reserve. The recommendation of the World Food Council that this Emergency Reserve should be annually replenished has received general endorsement. Total commitments of food aid for fiscal year 1979 were slightly in excess of ten million tons. These are important contributions to world food security.

However, too much of the progress in the world food situation to date is the result of good weather. It is bumper crops that have pulled the world back from the danger of widespread famine, and governments have been slow to deal with the fundamental issues of world food security. In particular, we are concerned with the slow progress in negotiating the new International Wheat Agreement. The world still lacks an adequate grain reserve system to underpin food security and ensure that in time of food shortage the essential needs of the poor as well as the rich will be met. And the international Food Aid Convention is limited to the four million tons agreed in 1971, as against the World Food Conference target of ten...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• About the Authors
• Section 1. THE GLOBAL PROBLEM OF BALANCING POPULATION AND FOOD
• Section 2. THE POTENTIAL SOURCES OF FOOD
• Section 3. THE PROCESS OF AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
• Section 4. THE INFLUENCE OF TRADE AND INVESTMENT
• Section 5. THE CONSEQUENCES FOR AMERICA