Agriculture - future world food markets

Abstract

The problem of world food supply has been in the center of public attention for many many years, dating back to the historical event when Malthus first expounded his now famous theory on the relationship between population and food supply. Since then the problem of insufficient world food supply to meet ever rising world demand has become more acute and the search for the solution becomes increasingly more difficult. To-day, despite many remarkable advances and technological breakthrough in agricultural production (a case in point is the "Green Revolution" in many developing nations), the overall world food situation seems to have grown out of proportion and that the likelihood of a widespread famine in some developing countries appears more and more imminent. For instance, recent FAO estimates show that approximately 500 million people are undernourished and several million others are actually on the verge of starvation (1). Some experts go even further than this. For example, if it can be assumed that the average minimum calorie intake per person were 2400 per day as some suggests, then a staggering 70 percent of the world population are undernourished! (2). Unrealistic as these statistics may appear they, nevertheless, portray the existing world food supply problem into its proper perspective.