Suchergebnisse

A multidisciplinary group of scholars present the many faces and facets of global food insecurity---their symptoms, roots, and possible remedies---through personal stories of research and policy advising at local and global scales. The authors explore the interconnectedness of food security and energy, water, climate, health, and national security as well as its policy implications.

What will it take to meet the global food needs of up to 10 billion people by midcentury in the midst of expanding civil conflicts, human displacement, extreme climate events, and other natural disasters?

This article analyzes international commodity price movements, assesses food policies in response to price fluctuations, and explores the food security implications of price volatility on low‐income groups. It focuses specifically on measurements, causes, and consequences of recent food price trends, variability around those trends, and price spikes. Combining these three components of price dynamics shows that the variation in real prices post‐2000 was substantially greater than that in the 1980s and 1990s, and was approximately equal to the extreme volatility in commodity prices that was experienced in the 1970s. Macro policy, exchange rates, and petroleum prices were important determinants of price variability over 2005–2010, highlighting the new linkages between the agriculture‐energy and agriculture‐finance markets that affect the world food economy today. These linkages contributed in large part to misguided expectations and uncertainty that drove prices to their peak in 2008. The article also argues that there is a long‐lasting effect of price spikes on food policy around the world, often resulting in self‐sufficiency policies that create even more volatility in international markets. The efforts by governments to stabilize prices frequently contribute to even greater food insecurity among poor households, most of which are in rural areas and survive on the margin of net consumption and net production. Events of 2008—and more recently in 2010—underscore the impact of price variability for food security and the need for refocused policy approaches to prevent and mitigate price spikes.

The book provides a broad synthesis of the major supply and demand drivers of the dramatic expansion of oil crops in the tropics; its economic, social, and environmental impacts; and the future outlook to 2050. It is a comprehensive review of the oil crop sector with a major focus on oil palm and soybeans, the two most dynamic crops in world agriculture in recent decades.

AbstractPublished estimates of 2050 food demand exhibit an enormous range of values. This paper projects a 50–60 percent increase in total global food demand between 2019 and 2050. Our analysis indicates a substantial slowing of rice demand, a growing share of palm oil in world fats and oils markets, and a continued shift to poultry as the dominant form of meat consumption. In contrast to most existing food models, we integrate fish consumption into the analysis of vegetable and animal protein and highlight the dangers of using commonly cited feed ratios for projecting feed grain demand. More broadly, we demonstrate the value of a commodity by region approach for understanding complexities in the world food system.