The World Food Day celebration on October 16 was the first after the world food crisis in 2007-08, when the idea gained ground that growing food consumption in China and India was the single biggest reason for the mess. In India, as elsewhere across the globe, the focus is still on prices rather than production, as tackling supply bottlenecks requires a much larger time span.
But confronting price instability is also equally important as it threatens global food security by undermining the legitimacy of global markets as a secure source of food supply, which can add to the credibility of cynics who continue to predict worst-case scenarios pointing to the large number of food riots across the globe.
No doubt, the challenges are daunting, given the formidable targets that are to be achieved if the world is to move closer to greater food security even as it is saddled with feeding an additional 2.3 billion, pushing up global population to 8.8 billion in 2050.
Most recent estimates made by multilateral agencies indicate that this will mean that world cereal production should increase from around 2 billion to 3 billion tonnes by 2050 and that of meat from 250 million to 460 million tonnes during the period. Most of this growing demand would come from developing countries. While cereal requirements of developed countries would have to be ramped up 35% to 1.2 billion tonnes, that of developing countries need to surge by 61% to 1.8 billion tonnes. In the case of meat, the production would have to move up by 23% to 1.3 million tonnes, while that of developing countries would have to increase by 132% to 3.3 billion tonnes.
This would require voluminous resources that will be difficult to cobble up easily, given the constraints not only of land and water but also of available technology. Consider land, the basic input. Currently, only 1.6 billion hectares or 12% of the total land surface of 13.4 billion hectares is used for crop production. The expert view is that the arable land will expand only by 120 million hectares, with most of the increase happening in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. But its impact will be partially neutralised by the 50 million hectares decline in cropland in developed countries.
Estimates made by FAO show that increased production requirements in the developing countries would have to come from rising yields, especially in the case of rice and wheat. While wheat yields must rise 72% in the developing countries, those of rice should go up by 123% as the size of land used for rice production is even expected to decline.
Overall estimates for all major crops indicate that 80% of the increase in production would have to come from more intensive agriculture in the form of higher yields (71%) and cropping intensities (8%). The scenario is only slightly different in the case of South Asia, where India is the major player, as 87% of the increase would have to come from yield improvement and 8% from higher cropping intensities. The contribution of arable land expansion can only be just 5%.
So, both China and India, the two emerging economies with the largest population, would have to ramp up food production much faster. But both nations have little more than 170 million hectares of arable land and only a limited scope for extending cultivation. In China, land availability is even expected to decline.
India is already high up in the global cereal production ranking?taking the lead in rice production, next to China in the case of wheat and just below China and Brazil in the case of maize. Studies show that though the growth of yields have been decelerating, the potential is still vast as actual yields in most cereal growing regions of India are still far below the agro ecologically attainable yields.
Another major factor that boosts confidence is that both India and China?net importers till the turn of the century?have now emerged as net exporters, annually supplying 4-6 million tonnes in the last four years up to 2008. But a recent study by the International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that China?s net cereal imports would exceed 50 million tonnes in both 2025 and 2050. India will remain a net cereal exporter till 2025 and then become a net importer by 2050.
A major advantage that would be in India?s favour in meeting its cereal requirement needs is its low per capita consumption of meat, which now stands at around 5 kg. Moreover, higher incomes and population in India are unlikely to boost meat requirements on the same scale as China because of a larger share of vegetarians, which now stands at a high 40%. Growing meat exports from India are a pointer to the trend.
Efforts at improving yields are in the right direction. Now, both countries have to encourage a larger role for private sector investments to improve the pace of commercial applications of new technologies.
?p.raghavan@expressindia.com