Vital Signs 1998-1999

The Environmental Trends That Are Shaping Our Future

Lester R. Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781853835438
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134186013
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Economics

First Published in 1998. In this seventh annual edition of VITAL SIGNS the team at the Worldwatch Institute bring together an eclectic selection of disparate trends to offer a unique, multifaceted view of our rapidly changing world. This vital resource and reference guide traces the scientific, social, economic and environmental trends that have and continue to shape our world. Among the trends covered for the first time in VITAL SIGNS 1998-99, are frontier forests, plantation forestry, satellite launches, minerals exploration, small arms proliferation and female education. This year's edition points out that global emissions of carbon, the leading contributor to global climate change, hit another new high, while wind power has grown an amazing 26 per cent per year, and sales of solar cells jumped a phenomenal 43 per cent in 1997. VITAL SIGNS is the most comprehensive source of environmental and social information available.

Part ONE

Hey Indicators

Food
Trends

Grain Harvest Up Slightly

Lester R.Brown

At 1,881 million tons, the 1997 world grain harvest was up slightly from the previous record of 1,869 million tons in 1996.¹ (See Figure 1.) Yet production per person dropped from 324 kilograms in 1996 to 322 kilograms, a decline of nearly 1 percent.² (See Figure 2.) More important, the 1997 per capita figure was 6 percent below the all-time high of 342 kilograms in 1984.³

With good harvests in the major producing countries, wheat was the big gainer in 1997. (See Figure 3.) Record or near-record harvests in China, India, the United States, and the European Union pushed world wheat production to 609 million tons, passing 600 million tons for the first time.⁴ This was up from 583 million tons in 1996, a gain of more than 4 percent.⁵

Although it may surprise many people, the world’s leading wheat producer today is China. With a record 124-million-ton harvest, China is now getting close to doubling the U.S. wheat harvest of 69 million tons.⁶ Indeed, in some recent years, India also has eclipsed the United States, moving into the number two slot.⁷

The 1997 rice harvest barely held on to the gain of the year before, edging up to 382 million tons from 378 million tons.⁸ Gains in the rice harvests in Myanmar (formerly Burma), India, and Thailand were largely offset by slight declines in Indonesia and Japan.⁹ Not surprisingly, the world’s two leading rice producers are China and India. With harvests of 139 million tons and 82 million tons, respectively, these two population giants accounted for nearly 60 percent of the world rice harvest.¹⁰

Production of corn, the third major grain, totaled 579 million tons in 1997, down from the all-time high of 592 million tons the year before.¹¹ Most of the reduction in the world corn crop came in China, the number two producer, where heat and drought dropped the harvest from 127 million tons to 105 million tons, a decline of 17 percent.¹²

The U.S. corn crop, essentially unchanged at 238 million tons, accounts for a staggering 41 percent of the world corn crop and more than one eighth of the overall grain harvest.¹³ This is far and away the largest harvest of a single grain by any country. Corn, the only grain crop originating in the New World, also has the highest worldwide yield per hectare of any grain.¹⁴

The big news on the grain front is the apparent loss of momentum in the growth of the world harvest during the 1990s. Even though the 11 million hectares of cropland that were idled under U.S. farm commodity programs in 1990 (1.6 percent of the world grainland total) have been returned to production, the world grain harvest has grown barely 1 percent a year since 1990.¹⁵

The backlog of unused agricultural technology that farmers can use to raise yields appears to be shrinking. For some farmers, such as U.S. wheat growers and Japanese rice...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• FOREWORD
• OVERVIEW: NEW RECORDS, NEW STRESSES
• Part One: KEY INDICATORS
• Part Two: SPECIAL FEATURES
• NOTES
• THE VITAL SIGNS SERIES