1. QUESTION: If world grain production per capita is falling [see Brown and Kane], can it be rising in less developed countries (LDCs) AND in developed countries? Explain your answer.

2. Can We Produce Enough Food? • Malthus, Pessimists and Optimists • What does the past mean? • What strategies does it suggest? • What Do the Data Show and Hide? • Production, Area, Irrigation, Fertilizer, Yields • The Green Revolution in Asia and (not) Africa • Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)

3. Malthus, Pessimists, and Optimists • What does the past mean? • What strategies does it suggest?

6. Wisconsin State Journal, 2000(?)

10. How should we interpret the past? • Expect more of the same? • Need a new paradigm? • What strategy implications?

11. Runge, et al: Strategies for Fighting Malnutrition (Focus on economic development) • “Hunger today is less a problem of general food availability than of access.” • “Today’s supply of food … is more than enough for everyone, equal to about 2700 calories per person per day.” • “Long-term solutions to hunger require that families … have the economic wherewithal to meet their own food needs.” • “People lack access to food because of inadequate income, political disadvantage, or war.”

12. World Bank Views on Food Security Dimensions of Food Security (What’s Needed?) 1. Adequate global food supplies ·   research and extension ·   fair trading regimes

13. World Bank Views on Food Security Dimensions of Food Security (What’s needed?) 2.  Poverty Reduction ·   national economic growth ·   agriculture as engine of growth ·   access to land and capital ·   markets and agribusiness

14. World Bank Views on Food Security Dimensions of Food Security (What’s Needed?) 3.  Health and Nutrition Programs ·   nutrition education ·   alleviate micronutrient deficiencies ·   improve intrahousehold allocations ·   help pregnant/lactating women ·help infants and children

17. Brown and Kane –Are We Entering a New Era?6 New Constraints • Backlog of agricultural technology shrinking • Pressing the limits of fisheries and range • Pressing limits of water availability • Fertilizer benefits are slowing • Losing cropland • Social disintegration – caused by rapidpopulation growth and environmental degradation

19. What do the data show and hide? • Production • Area • Irrigation • Fertilizer • Yields

20. Brown and Kane: Indicators of the Malthusian specter? • Grain Production • Grain Land • Irrigation • Fertilizer • Yield Focus on grain (cereal) because it provides most of the calories in LDCs. 1453/2678 (2000).

21. Two Agendas • How to understand the data • What is the situation?

22. Production

24. Grain Production/Capita(Brown and Kane)

25. Point Comparisons • “But during the next nine years [1984 – 1993] per capita [grain] production fell by more than one tenth.” Brown and Kane, p. 38

27. Aggregation • Aggregation can hide the effect of changes in weightings. So…production per person may be increasing in developed and developing countries, but world production per person may decrease. • How is that possible?

31. Aggregation May Hide Contrasting Regional/National Stories • World data may hide different stories in different regions with different implications for the Malthusian question. • Example: Decline in Chinese cereal production per person in late 1990s was probably due to diversification of diet way from cereal to more valued foods -- the opposite of the Malthusian specter. • And China data have big effect on world data.

34. 1982 1983 1985 1988 1990 1995 1997 728 617 743 604 727 596 697 Developed Countries Grain Production (kg/cap)

35. 1961 1970 1980 1990 1999 2000 188 224 235 259 264 252 Less Developed Countries Grain Production (kg/cap)

36. 1961 1970 1980 1988 1992 1996 2000 151 144 124 145 123 140 121 African Grain Production (kg/cap)

37. AREA • What do global numbers show and hide? • What do China’s numbers mean?(What are China’s numbers?)

38. World Grain Harvested Area (Brown and Kane)What Is Aggregation Hiding?

42. World grainland shrank after 1981 because exporting country farmers responded to policy changes

44. China Farmland • Brown: “The shifting of land to nonfarm uses is particularly pronounced in China, which is losing 1 million hectares of its cropland a year.” (P. 99) • FAO: steady increase in arable and permanent crops in China

48. Suppose Brown is correct and China is losing grainland? • So what? • Suppose it is losing cropland? • So what?

49. Only Africa and South America may have potential to significantly expand cropland • But even for those areas, and rest of the world, most gains in food production must come from higher yields • Irrigation • Chemicals • Plant Improvement

50. Irrigation