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Food security
means having access to enough nutritious food to
lead a happy, active life. In the aftermath of
the 2007 food crisis, there were a number of concerns
raised about food security. We're seeing rising food
demand from growing populations and increasingly
wealthy populations. And the question
is, can agriculture meet this increasing demand? The World Health
Organization defines three pillars of food security--
food availability, by which they mean that there are
sufficient quantities of food consistently
available; food access, which means that people
have sufficient resources to obtain appropriate foods,
they can afford to buy them; and food use, which
means that people have the knowledge required
to hygienically prepare foods that meets their
nutritional needs. Let's talk about why food
demand is increasing, and it's pretty obvious. The first reason is
population growth. In 1970, there were
around half as many people as there are today. We currently have
around 7 billion people, and it's expected
that by 2015 we'll have around 9 billion people. This graph shows the increase
in world population since 1950, and you can see it's a
pretty steady increase. There's just a
hint of a tendency to reduce the rate of
increase in the later years of that period, and we do expect
that by the end of the century it will probably
have flattened off. But there's plenty
of increase to go before we get to that point. The second reason why
food demand is increasing is economic growth--
most spectacularly in China-- but also in India,
in other Asian countries, and there are also signs
of economic growth getting underway in some
African countries. And as I mentioned,
the question is, can agriculture meet
this increasing demand? And how might they do it? One way would be by increasing
agricultural land area. But that's going to
be very challenging, because the competition
for land is growing. It's growing because
of increasing urban areas,
industrialization, land needed for industrial areas. And that's all compounded
by the population growth that we're seeing. Since 1960, this graph
shows that there really hasn't been any increase
in the total area of land used for agricultural
production. And it's expected
that there might be some increase in future,
but it's probably not going to be very major. The other major way-- and
the much more likely option-- for increasing food supply is
through increased productivity on existing agricultural land. And there's a whole variety of
ways that this might happen-- through improved crop
varieties, growing mechanization of agriculture around the world,
and increasing use of inputs, such as fertilizers, water
and irrigation, pesticides, and herbicides. This graph shows the increasing
total factor productivity in three developed agricultural
countries, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Total factor
productivity is an index which shows the level
of outputs produced for a given level of inputs. And in these three
countries, it's clear that this productivity
has increased over time in a moderately
linear sort of way. There's been some
wiggling around the line. But on average, it's been a
fairly steady linear trend of increase. And we would have to hope that
that increase would continue and would also occur in other
countries in the developing world if we're going to meet
the food supply challenge. In summary, the 2007 food crisis
raised a number of concerns about food security. We've mentioned three
elements of food security-- availability, access,
and use of food. We've looked at the
increasing future demand for food due to increasing
populations and increasing economic growth. And we've asked the
question, will this outstrip the supply
increases for which we'll be relying on
productivity gains? And the bottom line, I guess,
is that we really don't know. Time will tell, and it
will depend very much on how successful
agriculture is in increasing its productivity
in future years.
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