The World Food Situation

Resource and Environmental Issues in the Developing Countries and The United States

Pierre R. Crosson, Kenneth D Frederick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138944626
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317371137
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Environmental Economics
• Index: Economics

At the beginning of the 1970's, global grain reserves were level and food prices were low however as the decade progressed crop production plummeted leading to a food crisis. Originally published in the aftermath in 1977, Crosson and Frederick set out to explore the ability of agricultural output to meet the global food demands of future generations. This study analyses how resources and environmental factors would affect food production in developing countries and the United States until the end of the 21st Century. The environmental impacts of land levels, fertiliser and pesticide use are explored in relation to the challenges of meeting food demands. This title will be of interest to students of environmental studies.

Chapter 1
Background and Summary

Concerns regarding the global food situation have gone virtually full cycle during the 1970s. At the start of the decade, grain reserves were large, food prices relatively low, and U.S. agricultural policies designed to restrict output and support growers' prices. The situation changed abruptly when world food production on a per capita basis suffered its sharpest decline in twenty years in 1972, and the crisis atmosphere initiated by these crop failures was prolonged by further major crop failures in 1974. By 1973/74 total grain stocks were only 10 percent of apparent consumption compared to 19 percent four years earlier, grain prices were two to three times the levels of two years earlier, and the United States had removed all production constraints on its farmers. More recently, the record global grain harvest in 1976/77 and expectations for another large harvest in 1977/78 have eased, at least temporarily, concerns regarding global food adequacy. Grain prices during the first quarter of 1977 were 10 to 50 percent below their levels of two years earlier measured in nominal terms; the real declines were considerably larger. World wheat and coarse grain stocks in 1976/77 were nearly 50 percent above the levels of the previous year, and in 1977 agricultural policy debates in the United States once again centered around the appropriate level of agricultural price supports and the need for acreage restrictions.

The food crisis refueled a long-standing debate as to the ability of agricultural output to keep pace with needs. The neo-Malthusians emerged in force during the recent food shortages. In their view the crisis was largely the result of long-term forces and trends which include declining quantities and qualities of unused land and water resources, rising prices of fertilizer, energy, and other productivity increasing inputs, declining additional benefits from new agricultural technologies, and perhaps even deteriorating climatic conditions for agriculture. Their argument concludes that it will be increasingly difficult and costly to expand world food production to meet future demand. The contrary view holds that the recent crisis can be attributed primarily to an unusual combination of short-run phenomona and that technological change will enable food production to keep pace with demand without significant real cost increases.

Most of the experts now seem to agree that primarily short-run factors, especially adverse weather in important agricultural areas, were responsible for the recent food crisis. However, the apparent recovery from the crisis, as measured by declining grain prices and rising stocks, was due more to slow growth of demand since the early 1970s than to unusually good production performance. From the beginning of the 1960s to 1971/72-1973/74 world consumption of grains grew by about 3.3 percent annually. From 1971/72-1973/74 to 1976/77, however, consumption of grains increased at an annual rate of only 1.6 percent. Much of the slowdown in consumption growth reflects a decline in the amount of grain fed to livestock in the United States, although other components of world demand for grains also grew more slowly. Production of grains grew about 3.0 percent annually from the early 1960s to 1971/72-1973/74 and about 2.8 percent per year from 1971/72-1973/74 to 1976/77. If consumption had continued to grow at the earlier rate the increment of consumption between 1971/72-1973/74 and 1976/77 would have been 166.5 million metric tons of grains, 16 million metric tons more than the increment of production. The actual increment of consumption was 79.3 million metric tons, 61.4 metric tons less than the increment of production. Clearly, if consumption had continued to grow at the earlier rate, the pressure on world production capacity would have been much greater than it was, grain prices would not have fallen as much, or at all, and stocks in 1976/77 would have been much less than they were.¹

These considerations suggest that the decline of grain prices and increase in grain stocks in 1976/77 do not rule out the possibility or even the likelihood that longer-term trends in food consumption and production imply persistent difficulties in meeting the food needs of future generations. Indeed, the debates as to the causes of and solutions to the recent food crisis highlighted important gaps in our knowledge regarding the factors likely to affect the rate and costs of future food increases. Areas of uncertainty include the costs, both economic and environmental, of bringing new land and water resources into production, the productivity of these resources under alternative technologies, the long-run implications of current and anticipated rates of ground water depletion, erosion, pesticide and fertilizer use, and salinity, the possibilities for adapting and adopting existing technologies to new environments and crops, and the long-run impacts of high energy costs. Our understanding of these factors is an important element in our capacity to develop an effective long-run agricultural development strategy.

The focus of this research paper is on the resource and environmental factors likely to affect food production in the developing areas and the United States to the end of this century, although for the United States our projections extend only to 1985. This focus does not indicate that we believe other factors and regions are unimportant to the long-term global food outlook. We readily concede the tremendous importance of the institutions affecting both the motivation of individual farmers and the overall efficiency with which a nation's human, financial, and natural resources are used in agricultural production. However, these factors are not examined in this paper.

The paper summarizes the initial or reconnaissance phase of our research. While the paper offers no new data or analyses to narrow the areas of uncertainty clouding the future food outlook, we hope that the systematic presentation of the demand, resource, and environmental issues and their interrelationships will help clarify some of the problems, policy options, and research needs for meeting the challenge of adequately feeding future generations at acceptable costs.

Summary of the Study

To set the stage for the subsequent analysis of the resource and environmental issues, chapter 2 examines the magnitude of the effort required to increase world production in step with food demand to the end of this century. The challenge is great since world food demand by the year 2000 should be more than twice the 1970 level. High population growth rates and low initial consumption levels in the developing nations indicate that the major global challenge will be to raise the average level of food consumption in the low-income areas. If the developing areas achieve what we believe should be minimum objectives for average dietary levels, these areas will account for about three-fourths of the total growth in world food demand to the end of the century. To achieve these consumption increases, the developing areas must either accelerate the growth of their own production or become increasingly dependent on food imports.

Chapter 3 examines the resource and technological factors underlying both the potential for and the costs of agricultural expansion in developing areas. Surveys of land and water potential suggest that the developing areas as a group possess abundant unutilized land and water resources with agricultural potential. The distribution of these natural resources in relation to population, however, is very uneven. While Asia accounts for more than 70 percent of the population, it possesses less than 11 percent of the unutilized agricultural land potential of the developing areas. Thus, agricultural development options in most of Asia are limited essentially to increasing the yields on lands already in cultivation. While agricultural development in much of Africa and Latin America is not so constrained, the costs of bringing their vast virgin land and water resources into production and the productivity of these resources under alternative technologies are uncertain. Estimates of global and regional resource availability provide little insight as to either the likely costs or the desirable patterns of agricultural development in various regions. Yet, examination of the resource situation leaves little doubt that efforts to expand agricultural production along traditional lines soon would encounter rising costs that probably would frustrate efforts to accelerate agricultural growth. Technological change both to increase yields on currently cultivated lands and to bring new lands into production is the key to success in these efforts. The potential to overcome specific resource limitations and forestall the advent of diminishing returns in agriculture through technological change has been demonstrated in many countries. Unfortunately, technologies which help revolutionize agriculture in one area seldom are applicable directly to another area. Additional research is required to adapt technologies to the environments and factor proportions of different regions. The relevance of existing technologies to the tropical environments characteristic of much of the unutilized land resources is even more remote. Furthermore, since the technologies associated with high productivity agriculture are energy intensive, high energy costs will keep upward pressure on production costs and could slow the development and rate of adoption of new technologies. Nevertheless, well funded, managed, and planned research efforts can provide the developing areas with the potential to increase agricultural production in step with demand to at least the end of the century. If the potential is to be realized, however, the institutional shortcomings which divert resources out of agriculture or discourage their efficient use within agriculture must be eliminated.

Chapter 4 describes briefly the most important environmental impacts of agriculture--those resulting from soil erosion, salinity and other effects of irrigation, fertilizer and pesticide pollution, and others—and makes two principal points about them. The first is that these impacts on the environment exact real social costs, for example in loss of soil productivity, reduced electric generating capacity and damage to irrigation systems from accelerated siltation of reservoir and canals, and illnesses and deaths resulting from pesticide poisoning and water-borne diseases, such as schistosomiasis. The second point is that management of environmental impacts presents special problems because of the difficulty of establishing property rights in air and water, and in some cases land (where it is held in common). In the absence of property rights to these resources, markets are not established for allocating them among users and charging for the services they render, for example as dumps for effluents of agricultural production. Consequently the costs of the services--environmental costs--are not borne by those who impose them but by others who subsequently use or are exposed to the air, water or land. The disassociation between the imposer and bearer of these costs creates issues of economic efficiency and social equity which in most instances require some form of public intervention.

Chapter 5 considers the environmental impacts likely to result over the next several decades from efforts of the developing countries to increase food production. There are no comprehensive quantitative data relevant to this issue and relatively little data of any kind. The fragmentary evidence available suggests, however, that environmental damage from agriculture already is high in the developing countries. Given the scale of effort needed to meet anticipated demands for food, these damages could rise substantially higher. Our judgment is that erosion and various problems associated with irrigation, particularly salinity and water-borne diseases, are likely to be more important than problems of fertilizer and pesticide pollution. While the technical knowledge for coping with these more serious problems is reasonably well developed, the institutional, economic, and social obstacles to bringing this knowledge to bear are formidable. The erosion problem in many hill regions, for example, reflects a combination of high population pressure, limited access to less erodible land, existence of communal land holdings, and limited opportunities for non-agricultural employment. Under these circumstances it is difficult to reduce pressure on the land or to induce farmers to adopt erosion control techniques.

Chapter 6 considers projections to 1985 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture of crop production in the United States under baseline and high-demand assumptions, and the quantities of land, fertilizer and pesticides likely to be employed. This chapter, therefore, addresses the same issues with respect to the United States as chapter 3 does for developing countries.

Much of chapter 6 is concerned with analysis of the effects of prices and productivities of inputs and of government policies on farmer choices among technologies. While the analysis is inconclusive, it indicates that for a given level of production the behavior of productivity is crucial in determining the quantities of resources used. This is not a surprising result, but it is particularly important because there now is great uncertainty about the future course of productivity. From the early to mid-1970s agricultural productivity in the United States grew hardly at all, in contrast to two previous decades of rapid increase, and yields per acre of major crops declined or were only marginally above previous peaks. While bad weather and expansion of crops onto marginal lands accounted for some, perhaps much, of this behavior, there is evidence also that the potential for productivity growth of the technologies on which U.S. farmers have long relied is now much more limited than it was a decade ago.

We have not attempted to determine the relative importance of these factors affecting productivity and yields. Our analysis shows, however, that the projections of harvested land are particularly sensitive to assumptions about these factors, with pesticide projections less sensitive and projections of fertilizer the least sensitive of all. Explanation of the recent behavior of yields and productivity is a major focus of research on U.S. agriculture now underway at RFF.

Chapter 7 is focused on the likely environmental impacts in the United States of the levels of land, fertilizer and pesticide use projected in chapter 6 and on some of the policy issues likely to arise in dealing with these impacts. Some attention is given also to salinity associated with irrigation, although we have made no projections of irrigation water or irrigated land. Chapter 7, therefore, treats the same issues for the United States as chapter 5 does for the developing countries.

We note the great difficulty of determining the damages resulting from erosion, fertilizer and pesticide pollution and salinity, but conclude that erosion is likely to be perceived as the most serious of the environmental problems, particularly if yield growth is slow and the high demand situation prevails. In these circumstances there would be great pressure to convert to crops tens of millions of hectares of land now in pasture, forest or range. Much of this land would be subject to substantially higher rates of erosion than land now in crops, unless appropriate tillage or erosion control measures are taken.

While we conclude that the erosion problem may be more important in the United States than fertilizer or pesticide pollution or salinity, we note great uncertainties about the environmental damages done by these materials, particularly nitrogen fertilizer, organophosphorous insecticides and herbicides. The chief uncertainty about nitrogen fertilizers concerns possible damage to the ozone shield by various oxides of nitrogen. There is evidence that this damage may become large over the next several decades, but the evidence is inconclusive. Moreover some students of the problem argue that the damage, if any, is a function of the total amount of fixed nitrogen worldwide, not just that embodied in chemical fertilizers. In this case management of the problem would require international cooperation and could present exceptional technical and political difficulties. For example, developing substitutes for nitrogen fertilizer such as biological nitrogen fixation in grains would not be a feasible technical solution. Even if a technical solution were found, effective implementation might founder on differing perceptions among countries of the costs and benefits of control.

In the United States there is a marked trend toward substitution of non-persistent organophosphorous insecticides for persistent organochlorines and toward greater use of herbicides. There is a presumption that these trends will have favorable effects on the environment since persistence complicates the problem of pesticide management and herbicides are considered benign to most forms of animal life. We do in fact regard these trends as favorable, but we stress that this conclusion is tentative. It is well established that most organophosphorous compounds are non-persistent but it is not established that they are free of long-term ill effects. Both field experience and experimental work with these materials are insufficient for judgment on this score. With respect to herbicides it seems clear that they have little harmful effect on most higher forms of animal life, but there is some evidence that they may damage lower trophic levels. If this is true then the cumulative damage to ecological systems could in time be serious.

¹All data are from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), The World Food Situation, p. 18 and USDA Foreign Agriculture Circular, p. 40. If consumption had increased at the earlier rate, prices would have been higher; consequently production probably would have grown faster than it did in fact after 1971/721973/74. However, the slowdown in production growth after those years was slight, 2.8 percent annually compared to 3.0 percent from the early 1960s to 1971/721973/74. It seems unlikely, therefore, that even with more favorable prices production would have grown much faster than it did.

References

U.S. Department of Agriculture. 1974. The World Food Situation and Prospects to 1985. Economic Research Service. Foreign Agricultural Economic Report No. 98.

——. 1977. Foreign Agriculture Circular: Grains. FG 6-77 May 2, 1977.

Chapter 2
Food Consumption and the Growing Food Gap in the Develop...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Background and Summary
• Chapter 2 Food Consumption and the Growing Food Gap in the Developing Nations
• Chapter 3 Resource and Technological Factors in Accelerating Agricultural Production in the Developing Areas
• Chapter 4 Nature and Management of Environmental Impacts of Agriculture
• Chapter 5 Environmental Impacts of Food Production in the Developing Countries
• Chapter 6 Resource Implications for the United States of Increasing Food Production
• Chapter 7 Environmental Implications for the United States of Increasing Food Production