21-2 |
World food security today, prospects for 2025 |
G. C. NELSON, Dept. of Agricultural & Consumer Economics, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 315 Mumford Hall, 301 W. Gregory, Urbana, IL 61801 World food security is not, and will never be, an issue of adequate quantities of food alone. If all food produced today were evenly distributed, every one of the world's 6 million people would be able to consume almost 3,000 calories per day. Rather food security results from complex interactions among environment, markets, and institutions all framed in an environment of increasing globalization. This presentation starts with a brief discussion of what food security means and why millions of people, especially in South Asia and Africa, do not have secure access to food today. The central role of effective demand - having the financial resources to pay for food - is highlighted. Next the presentation reviews the two sides of the world food market - demand and supply - with an eye to the critical factors that explain food insecurity - the natural resource base, technology, incentives to produce, population, effective demand, and public policy. Predicting the future is a task fraught with uncertainty. While it is fairly easy to predict population growth, it is much more challenging to assess the consequences of resource degradation, increasing scarcity of fresh water, the likelihood of appropriate agricultural and macroeconomic policy reform, and the speed of technological advance and adoption. The presentation reviews likely scenarios for the critical factors identified above, drawing on past trends and assessments recently completed at the International Food Policy Research Institute, FAO, and elsewhere. Finally, this presentation turns to the issue of what role genetically modified crops might play in addressing world food security. It provides a speculative overview of their possible contributions to addressing effective demand and the resource constraints outlined above.
Session 21, How will we feed the world in 2025?
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