On the resurgent population and food debate

Since Malthus wrote his famous Essay on Population , the world has witnessed great improvements in numerous measures of well–being — life expectancy, infant mortality, incidence of famines and plagues, per capita food consumption as well as real per capita incomes. These improvements have come about during rapid population growth in both industrial and developing countries. Food demand and supply projections suggest that growth of supply will fully meet growth of consumption while grain prices continue to decline. While China may increase grain imports early next century, Central and Eastern Europe is likely to emerge as a major grain exporter and thus help to meet the increase in China's imports.     

新一轮国际粮食价格上涨：原因及对中国市场的影响

[目的]随着中国粮食进口不断增加,国内外市场联系越来越紧密。2020年下半年以来,国际市场粮食价格快速上涨,对国内粮食市场产生一定影响,分析国际市场价格上涨的原因和影响对确保国内粮食供应稳定、保障国家粮食安全具有重要意义。[方法]文章分析了2019年以来小麦、大米、玉米、大豆4种粮食产品的国内外价格走势,从供需状况、贸易政策、气候变化等因素分析国际市场价格波动的原因,并探讨了国际价格对国内价格的影响。[结果]当前全球主要粮食品种供应充足,库存仍处于较高水平,此轮国际粮食价格上涨主要是受到美国等发达国家宽松的货币政策以及疫情后全球消费逐步回暖的影响;但国际市场价格上涨对中国市场的影响总体有限,国内小麦、大米、玉米价格上涨的主因是国内消费回暖和生猪产能恢复带动的饲用需求快速增长,油用大豆受国际市场的影响较大。[结论]为稳定国内粮食市场,避免国际市场的冲击,中国要进一步提升粮食综合生产能力,强化科技支撑,加强粮食储备管理,健全政策支持体系,并引导居民建立科学的消费观念。     

Food production and population growth

Governments have frequently ignored the issue of population consumption exceeding the rates of renewal of natural resources. At the UN Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, the issue of population growth was ignored in the agenda and action plan. In 1974, the UN World Population Conference suggested population stability would be possible if standards of living were raised. Industrialized nations spent half a century of active interference with the stability of global populations and failed to slow growth. 27 countries, mainly in tropical and subtropical zones, have an average cereal yield of under 1 ton per hectare, when improved seed and basic minimum fertilizer could yield 2 tons per hectare. Efforts to increase yields by the Consultative Group for International Agricultural research in 13 international centers resulted in global annual increases of about 50 million tons of grain (wheat and rice). Rainfed agriculture did not benefit as much because of climatic conditions. Where varieties of triticale, sorghum, millet, groundnuts, chick peas, cowpeas, beans, and cassava have helped increase food production, population growth has outstripped the gains. Agricultural fertilizers have been unfairly blamed for soil nutrient losses. Because of the age structure of population, the expected population growth can only be addressed through development of higher yields, new strains resistant to disease, and fertilizers. Slow release phosphates for tropical soils are needed. Shortages of domestic fuel divert much needed farmyard manure and composted crop residues. About 400 million tons of dung are thus wasted annually; food grain harvests are thus reduced by 14 million tons. About 50% of the 1133 million poorest people will live in Asia and another 25% will live in Sub-Saharan Africa, living on a total degraded area of 1219 million hectares. Imbalance between food supply and population need to be addressed on an effective international scale.     

China's Accession to the World Trade Organization: What Is at Stake for Agricultural Markets?

We analyze the impact of China's accession to the World Trade Organization on major crop and livestock markets using the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) modeling framework. We incorporate expected changes in consumer income, textile production, and trade policies as exogenous shocks to the baseline model. Following accession, revenues decline in China's livestock, grain, and oilseed industries, while cotton production prospers despite increased imports. Chinese consumers benefit from lower food prices, with vegetable oil, dairy, and meat consumption increasing significantly. Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, and the United States are the greatest beneficiaries from expanded agricultural trade with China.     

Demand for cereal grains in Asia: the effect of urbanization

This paper analyzes the effects of urbanization on demand for cereal grains – rice, wheat, and coarse grains – in nine Asian countries. A complete demand system (Almost Ideal Demand System in linear form) is estimated in two stages based on aggregate time series data from 1960 to 1988. In the high-income countries, i.e. Japan and South Korea, urbanization was observed to significantly reduce demand for cereal grains. In the lower-income countries, demand for cereal grains cither increased or remained the same with urbanization. Among cereal grains, urbanization has had negative effects on demand for rice and coarse grains, but consistently positive effects on demand for wheat. Only Japan and Thailand among the countries studied have negative income elasticities of demand for total cereal grains and for rice in particular. Hence, rice remains a necessity and a normal good in most Asian countries. Previous estimates of income elasticities of rice based on time-series aggregate data tend to be lower than those based on cross-section household level data. When urbanization is explicitly specified in the demand model, the estimates of income elasticities from time-series data turn out to be consistent with those from cross-section data.     

Household Food Demand in Burkina Faso: Implications for Food Policy

Chronic food production deficits since the early 1970s have prompted policymakers of Burkina Faso to emphasize technological research with the goal of increasing the production of the most-consumed locally-grown cereals: sorghum, millet and maize. Meanwhile, urban consumers have been developing preferences for rice and wheat, cereals that are primarily imported. This study estimates demand relationships among food items in Ouagadougou, Burkina. The results of the estimation suggest that prices, income, household composition, education, marital status and urbanization were jointly important in explaining household expenditure allocations. Both local and imported cereal consumption responded positively to an income increase. However, incremental income changes would lead to relatively greater consumption of locally produced cereals by low-income households whereas high-income households would consume relatively more wheat and rice. The household model is then used to demonstrate its relevance in addressing food policy issues, by forecasting the levels of urban grain demand under alternative income and demographic scenarios. With increased production due to advances in technology, the urban demand levels do not exhaust the rural surplus of local cereals, but deficits persist in the rice-wheat sector. The results underscore the importance of technological research since Burkina could become self-sufficient in at least the production of sorghum, millet and maize.     

Toward a green revolution in Africa: what would it achieve,and what would it require?

The current global food crisis has reemphasized the costliness of Africa's failure to achieve food security and poverty reduction. The instrument by which other more successful developing countries achieved these outcomes was a “Green Revolution” in agriculture. While previous research has provided largely discursive appraisals of the viability of an African Green Revolution, this article adopts a more rigorous methodology to address that question. First, an economy‐wide multimarket model, augmented with existing poverty–growth elasticities, is developed to assess the likely impacts of a rapid acceleration in food production (of the kind witnessed in previous Green Revolutions) on food prices, consumption and demand, farmer revenue, and poverty. Our results suggest that a rapid growth in staple production, together with more integrated regional markets, would reduce food prices by roughly 20–40% for consumers and 10–20% for producers among the major crops. This translates into a large rise in farm revenues, annual agricultural growth rates of 6.5% or higher, broader income growth and food security, and over 70 million Africans being lifted out of poverty. The article concludes by emphasizing the kinds of fundamental policy actions and resources that would be required for achieving these outcomes.     

Enhancing food security in South Sudan: the role of markets and regional trade

South Sudan faces serious problems of food insecurity due to low levels of domestic food production, periodic droughts, widespread poverty, and since late 2013, renewed armed conflict. This article explores market price behavior using cointegration analysis and estimates the effects of production and trade shocks through multimarket model simulations. We show that market prices in the capital city, Juba, of both maize and sorghum are cointegrated with import parity prices of these cereals sourced from Uganda, consistent with observed trade flows. Model simulations, using econometrically estimated demand parameters, suggest that private sector imports of maize and wheat would greatly mitigate the potential fall in consumption in the case of a decline in domestic cereal production. Other simulations indicate that if total imports of cereals are reduced by one‐third (still more than two times the levels of food aid in 2013) because of disruptions to private market flows, domestic prices of cereals could rise by 45% or more. The article concludes that whatever measures are taken involving national food security reserves, it is crucial that government policy serves to maintain incentives for private sector imports to avoid destabilizing market supplies, domestic prices, and ultimately, food consumption of the poor.     

An error corrected almost ideal demand system for major cereals in Kenya

Despite significant progress in theory and empirical methods, the analysis of food consumption patterns in developing countries, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), has received very limited attention. An attempt is made in this article to estimate an Error Corrected Almost Ideal Demand System for four major cereals consumed in Kenya employing annual data from 1963 to 2005. This demand system performs well on both theoretical and empirical grounds. The symmetry and homogeneity conditions are supported by the data and the  Le Chatelier  principle holds. Empirically, all own-price elasticities are negative and significant at 5% level and irrespective of the time horizon, maize, wheat, rice, and sorghum may be considered as necessities in Kenya. While the expenditure elasticities of all four cereals are positive, they are inelastic both in the short run and in the long run. Finally, wheat and rice complement maize consumption in Kenya while sorghum acts as a substitute. Since cereal consumers have price and income inelastic responses, a combination of income and price-oriented policies could improve cereal consumption in Kenya.     

Changing food consumption patterns in rural and urban Vietnam: Implications for a future food supply system

Rapid income growth and urbanisation could significantly change the composition of the food basket in many emerging economies. This study estimates a demand system, including 15 major food items in Vietnam, with multiyear household survey data. We find a large variation in the estimated price elasticities (–0.05 to –0.88) and expenditure elasticities (–0.16 to 2.56). Food types, urban status and income groups can explain this variation. We also find that the staple food, rice, is already an inferior good for rich urban households in Vietnam. Moreover, food preferences are evolving away from rice but towards animal proteins (fish, pork, chicken, eggs and milk), fruits and vegetables, irrespective of urban status and income groups. As the Vietnam economy continues to grow with a doubling of gross domestic product (GDP) in the next decade, per capita rice consumption in both urban and rural areas and across different income groups will continue to decline, whereas demand for other high‐value products will rise. Thus, government policy should focus on encouraging demand‐oriented food production. In addition, crop diversification at the farm level needs to improve substantially to meet the rising demand for these food products due to income growth and urbanisation.     

Linkages between natural gas,fertiliser and cereal prices: A note

We use structural vector autoregressions to analyse the dynamic effects of shocks to natural gas and nitrogenous fertiliser prices on three major cereal crops: maize, rice and wheat. We find that the response of cereal prices to natural gas and fertiliser price shocks has been relatively small, instantaneous and transitory. These findings suggest that crop prices may change rapidly in response to energy and fertiliser prices, even when there are no shifts in the underlying fundamentals in crop markets. Furthermore, because the effects of the shocks dissipate rather quickly, short-term measures to address swings in food prices may suffice.     

Excerpts from the EU‐integration Story of Hungarian Agriculture: Heading Where?

Cereal production in Hungary doubled in 2004/2005 over the previous year and was 4 per cent lower in 2005/2006. There were 3.9 million tones of cereals taken into intervention in the 2004/2005 season, while until January 8, 2006, an additional 3.7 million tonnes of new crop were offered. High transport cost is a serious drawback for wheat and maize, produced under otherwise good natural conditions in the CEE region, in competing within the EU or in third country markets. The combined effects of an intervention price above ε90 a tonne, the implementation of the SPS and the decoupling of the national 'top-up' for arable crops together with the introduction of compulsory set-aside are unlikely to reduce cereal production in Hungary. Under normal conditions, 14.5–15 million tonnes of cereal stocks could be accumulated by 2010. In the pre-accession years livestock producers in Hungary enjoyed some direct subsidies but they had almost no access to investment and capital aids. This and the late approval of rural development programmes contributed largely to the decline in production. Despite huge excess stocks of cereals, the prospects for these major feed grain consuming sectors to expand look rather slim in the mid-term, due mainly to structural problems and the lack of capital for modernisation. Taken together these factors are likely to keep cereal market prices in Hungary under pressure in the next few years, despite the implementation of the SPS.     

Demand for food in Myanmar (Burma)

Aggregate quarterly time series data from 1975 to 1987 on government procurement prices and open (black) market prices were used in estimating an almost ideal demand system (AIDS) and double-log models for consumption of foodstuffs in Myanmar. The results from the AIDS model were superior to those from the double-log models. The estimated income elasticity of demand for non-meat foodstuffs was high, even for low-quality rice, which has been shown to be an inferior good in other Asian countries. The income elasticities for the non-cereals (groundnut oil, sesame oil, pulses, potato and onion) are positive and less than one. Contrary to expectation, the income elasticities for all meat items are low. Own-price elasticities for most foodstuffs were less than one. The estimated cross-price elasticities indicate the complementary nature of the basic food items to rice. A brief analysis of the effects of taxing Myanmarese rice exports and subsidising consumers indicated that there are net costs to government, unevenly distributed welfare gains to consumers and welfare losses to farmers.     

World food markets into the 21st century: environmental and resource constraints and policies

Projections of global food supply and demand to the year 2020 indicate that food production in the aggregate is likely to keep pace with growing populations and incomes, and that real food prices will be stable or slowly declining. This article examines the possible environmental and resource constraints to long-term food production growth and explores the implications of these possible constraints for food and resource policies. The article reviews and synthesises the evidence on biophysical limits to crop productivity; plant genetic resources and biotechnology; the availability of plant nutrients; soil and land degradation; the increasing scarcity and declining quality of water; and the impact of global climate change on agriculture.     

Economic growth,convergence, and agricultural economics

After nearly two centuries of lagging behind the industrial countries, growth in many developing countries has surged since the early 1990s. This outperformance has major implications for almost all areas of agricultural economics and, if continued, will likely do so into the future. This article aims to identify the key ways in which the changes in rich and poor country growth rates matter for agricultural economists, as a basis for formulating better research agendas. A key impact arises through sharp increases in demand for agricultural resources as demand for livestock products increases. This changing structure of food demand has important implications for nutrition studies and policies, with the emergence of a double burden of malnutrition. On the supply side, growth in developing countries tends to increase domestic food supply, which is also boosted by increases in research and development spending. Growth in developing countries both stimulates and benefits from increases in infrastructure investment, evaluation of which requires new analytical tools. Negative impacts include the contribution of increased demand for livestock products to global greenhouse gas emissions. In terms of trade policy, growth in developing country is tending to lead to convergence of agricultural policies with the pattern of assistance seen in today's developed countries, raising concerns about the future need to deal with collective action problems, particularly those that increase the volatility of world prices.     

An econometric analysis of rice consumption in the People's Republic of China

Rice is the most important staple food in the People's Republic of China (PRO. In many Asian countries rice appears to have become an inferior good, with income increases leading to declines in per capita consumption as other food products are substituted for rice. In this study, human rice consumption is analyzed with a model that allows income elasticities to vary with income levels. An additional equation accounting for rice disappearance as seed, livestock feed, industrial uses and exports is also estimated. The results of the analysis indicate that rice has become an inferior good in China and per capita consumption is likely to decline in the future. Population growth and the growing use of rice for other purposes means that total rice disappearance will continue to increase although at a rate that is slower than has historically been the case. The predicted changes in rice consumption will create pressures to adjust production and trade patterns for rice as well as other agricultural products.     

An Analysis of Household Beef Consumption of Japanese Expatriates in U.S.:

This paper uses a novel approach to investigate how food consumption in Japan may change as Japanese consumers become more westernised in their tastes and preferences for food. It is widely believed that as food prices in Japan fall to international levels and as Japanese consumers become more westernised in their taste and preferences for food, their meat consumption patterns, in particular, will approach those of western countries. The approach undertaken in this paper involves a comprehensive survey of Japanese expatriates in Los Angeles, California, regarding their food consumption habits. The findings are interesting as they shed some light on the changing nature of food consumption of accultured Japanese faced with competitive food prices. The results indicate that although household meat consumption of Japanese expatriates have changed, it remains debatable, however, that their food consumption habits will approach those of western consumers in the foreseeable future. The findings have important implications for food marketeers in Japan and elsewhere, particularly as further liberalisation of food import in that country gains momentum.     

我国小麦生产、消费和贸易的现状分析

[目的]小麦是在全球范围内广泛种植的一种非常重要的粮食作物,在三大粮食作物中保持着收获面积第一的地位。中国既是世界上最大的小麦生产、消费国,也是世界小麦贸易大国。全面多角度地分析我国小麦的供需现状,找出小麦产业发展面临的难题,提供科学合理政策建议,对于优化小麦生产和促进小麦贸易都具有积极意义。[方法]利用2007-2016年的统计数据,采用对比分析法对近年来我国小麦的生产、消费和进出口贸易情况进行研究,通过国际竞争力指标分析法测算了10年间我国小麦国际贸易竞争力水平,并与小麦主要出口国进行比较。[结果](1)我国小麦总体生产能力稳步提升,2016年小麦产量已达到1.29亿t,小麦的生产区域主要集中于河南、山东等省份,大部分省份仅少量种植小麦,小麦的成本收益率相对较低,净利润不断走低。(2)小麦消费量平稳增加,我国小麦的消费量达到1.16亿t,口粮消费占比80%,消费量较大的省份也多分布在小麦主产区,中部地区省份消费缺口相对较大。(3)小麦的贸易量趋向合理,进口量达453万t,我国小麦的供需总体上保持了平衡,但小麦国际贸易逆差较大,小麦的国际竞争力较弱,小麦进口来源过于集中在加拿大、美国等小麦生产大国的状况并未改善,好在哈萨克斯坦和俄罗斯等新兴小麦大国的兴起为我国小麦的多元化贸易提供了契机。[结论]我国要坚持小麦生产以我为主的战略,做好政府服务和市场导向的有机结合,增加农业投入促进小麦高效优质生产,加大科技进步对小麦生产的贡献,合理利用国际市场等措施来保障小麦充分供给,确保国家粮食安全。     

Challenges of trade and agricultural development for East/Central Europe and states of the former USSR

The agricultural transition in Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR reflects a fundamental change in development strategy, and will have a profound impact on agricultural trade. The greatest impact will be indirect, through agriculture's contribution to general economic reform and acceleration of regional and global growth. The direct impact on trade in food and fiber will in aggregate consist of a fall in net imports. Most of the decline in net imports will derive from reduction in demand and improved utilization. Potential for productivity increase is substantial, but not all of the increased productivity will be reflected in the traditional supply response of increased production. Instead marginal resources will shift out of farming, and producers will restructure and adopt new technologies in pursuit of lower costs. Shifts in the commodity composition of trade will occur, and the changes in grain and livestock markets will be greatest. If the reform is successful, the former Soviet Union could become a modest net grain exporter instead of a large importer. Wheat would be the leading export grain, and levels of wheat exports and corn imports could become quite sensitive to relative prices on world markets.     

The effects of China's growth on the food prices and the food exports of other developing countries

This article explores the impacts of China's growth in the international markets of agricultural products along two dimensions: food price inflation and export growth in other developing countries. China's food imports of vegetable oils have grown dramatically over the last decade, linking China's economic growth to the recent increases in global food prices. If China is a source of global food price inflation, exporting countries will benefit whether they sell directly to China or not. These direct and indirect linkages are explored using a short‐run, partial‐equilibrium model of international trade in agricultural products in which consumer prices and trade costs are derived from bilateral trade flows. China's effects on food prices and exports are estimated by reducing Chinese food expenditures in 2007 by half, roughly China's level of expenditures in 1995. Results indicate that food prices as measured by CES price indexes in developing Asia, Africa, and Latin America would have been reduced by 1.27%, 0.32%, and 0.22%, respectively. China has been an important source of growth for exporters selling directly to China. There is no evidence of export growth due to an overall increase in food prices caused by China's growth.