Two University of Missouri economists draw a sanguine conclusion about feeding the world at mid-century. It will be a challenge “but it would require a much smaller proportional increase in world grain and oilseed production over the next 35 years than was achieved over the last 35 years,” write economists Pat Westhoff and Wyatt Thompson in an academic letter. That’s because “Chinese demand and biofuel production account for the entire net increase in world per-capita grain and oilseed consumption since 1980.”
The world population grew by 63 percent from 1980-2015 while grain and oilseed usage zoomed by 86 percent. During that period, per capita consumption went up by 14 percent. By comparison, the global population is forecast to grow by about 30 percent through 2050. “Another 14 percent increase in per-capita use would imply a 47 percent increase in total grain and oilseed production between 2015 and 2050,” say the Missouri economists.
A UN estimate sees a global population of 9.7 billion people in 2050, compared to nearly 7.4 billion at present. Demand for food would grow due to the larger population and due to rising incomes that allow a portion of the population to eat better-quality and more expensive diets, such as more protein.
“Decisions made by farmers, agribusinesses and policymakers will determine how fast food production can grow in the future and those decisions will be affected by food prices,” write Westhoff and Thompson. “The challenge of feeding the world in 2050 has many aspects, but it is important to remember it is an economic problem, not just one of agronomics and demographics.”
Westoff and Thompson said population growth is slower today, around 1.1 percent per year, than the 2 percent annual growth of the 1960s. Crop yields are rising at almost the same rate as population, around 1.1 percent a year. Crop yields and population growth are two of the four indicators that “tell us a lot about how markets for grains and oilseeds have changed,” say the authors. The other two are the biofuel boom that began a decade ago and Chinese demand for grain.
China’s growing demand and the expansion of biofuels account for the sudden rise in per-capita consumption that began in 2002 and brought an additional 114 million hectares of land into production. China is still the dominant importer of soybeans and a significant customer for grain imports while more than 35 percent of the U.S. corn crop is used in making ethanol.
Excluding those two factors, per-capita consumption is little changed, raising an important question for farmers: Who will buy their crops if production continues to increase while demand by China and for biofuels tapers off? “Thus, the question may be whether a new ‘engine’ of food-demand growth emerges,” say the economists.