The world has added 398 million harvested acres of food grains, feed grains, and oilseeds since the start of the 21st century, mostly in tropical nations, said four analysts writing at the farmdoc daily blog. “Only with significant changes in its production technology” would U.S. agriculture, accustomed to being a world leader in row crops, benefit from this expansion, they said.
U.S. acreage devoted to food grains, feed grains, and oilseeds has been relatively static for the past two decades. Meanwhile, tropical countries, including Brazil, India, and Sudan, have brought more land into production of those crops than non-tropical nations did, said economists Carl Zulauf of Ohio State University and Gary Schnitkey, Joana Colussi, and Nick Paulson of the University of Illinois. China, Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan saw the largest increases among non-tropical countries.
“While Brazil attracts lots of attention … a more appropriate perspective is that Brazil is leading a shift in cropland to the tropics” that includes the possibility of increasing production through double-cropping of farmland, wrote the analysts. At least one-third of the increase in the world’s production of food grains, feed grains, and oilseeds since the turn of the century is attributable to the growth in cropland.
“The United States is unlikely to participate in any major way in the expansion of multiple cropping without a major change in its crop genetics and production technology,” said the blog. “When combined with the lack of increase in U.S. feed grain, food grain, and oilseed acres during the crop prosperity of the 21st century, due in part to policy, U.S. crop agriculture faces key strategic disadvantages moving forward unless it reinvents its production of crops.”
In the United States, food crops, grown for human consumption, include wheat and rice. Feed grains, used in livestock rations, include corn, sorghum, barley, and oats. Oilseeds include soybeans, sunflower seed, and canola. There is some overlap among the categories. For example, lower-quality wheat is fed to livestock, corn oil is used in processed foods, and sorghum is used to make molasses.