Bangladesh, Oct. 4 -- Abnormally high prices of food on the international market have become a cause for serious concern the world over.
Against its total production of 2,180 million tonnes, the world consumed 2,240 million tonnes last year. Clearly, it had to fall back upon its previous stock. To avoid a repeat of making up for the shortfall as also covering the increased annual demand for 40 million tonnes, the world needs to produce at least 100 million tonnes more grains this year. But it will have to produce an additional amount of 50 million tonnes if the soaring food prices have to be brought down to a reasonable level. Now the challenge is to achieve this target.
Evidently, the world that assured increased grain production is now history. Aquifer depletion and soil erosion together with global warming and the blunting of technological edge in some agriculturally advanced countries have certainly not helped the cause of more food production. Also droughts in Russia and China and severe storms in the United States of America have put a big question mark on the world’s ability to replenish last year’s grain shortfall.
Add to this, the floods and other natural calamities in countries like Australia and Pakistan, the challenge looks more daunting.
Of the big wheat producers China, India, the USA and Russia, which together produce half the world’s wheat, only India seems to have been spared any major calamities so far and is expected to harvest 82 million tonnes -just one million up from last year’s total. Russia should increase its produce. Both China, the leading wheat producer, and the USA, ranked third after India, according to projection, will record shortfalls down from 115 million tonnes to 110 million tonnes and from 60 million tonnes to 56 million tonnes respectively.
As for rice, the cereal that is a staple for about half of the world’s population but follows wheat in terms of output, it is expected to gain a production rise of no more than 10 million tonnes.
Then comes corn of which the major producers are the USA and China, accounting together for 40 and 20 per cent of the annual total of 814 tonnes. A major gain of 25 million tonnes in the corn yield for America is, however, not expected to receive any support from China.
So the balance between demand for and supply of food grains will continue to remain precarious. The situation is expected to turn from bad to worse if the new mouths joining the current size of six billion of them are taken into consideration. Of these new mouths, three billion are moving up the food chain putting increased pressure on grain-intensive livestock products. The last but not the least, a sizeable amount of grain is diverted to produce ethanol.
It is against this background, the yield of weather-hit corn expected to be third largest in the US history and the higher than expected stocks in that country will somewhat dispel the gloom.
Quite clearly this will not be enough to bring down food prices. Weakened demand for cereals is no cause for rejoicing; it only exposes the gravity of the situation. There is need for concerted action at the policy level of governments to stabilise food price so that distribution of food at reasonable prices is possible.
Published by HT Syndication with permission from The Financial Express. For any query with respect to this article or any other content requirement, please contact Editor at htsyndication@hindustantimes.com
