Abstract

A growing population means a rapidly increasing demand for food, and a growth in food supply is needed if we hope to meet it. Healthcare and agricultural revolutions over the 19th and 20th century leading to a massive population boom, coupled with the reality of global warming reducing crop yields have increased the urgency of the food security issue. The main economic methods to increase food security are to increase food supply, reduce food demand and to increase the general accessibility of food to poorer people. This paper aims to explore the historical context and theoretical background of the food security issue as well as to explore the economic implications of each of the potential solutions.

Introduction

The world population has been slowly growing for thousands of years, frequently fluctuating due to natural calamities, droughts, famine, and disease (Bevan, 2017). However, all this changed in the 1800s, a new age that gave rise to modern medicine which increased life expectancies, and agricultural practices that ensured a stable supply of food. It took more than 200,000 years for the human population to reach 1 billion and only 200 more years to reach 7 billion (Taiz, 2013). The agricultural and healthcare revolution which took off in the 1800s intensified in the 1900s due to rapid technological advancements. Figure 1 puts this into perspective by illustrating the sudden boom in the world population. Figure 2 shows population as well as the population growth rate over the past 300 years.

The population boom happened because fertility rates in the 1800s had remained constant while life expectancy increased. Although life expectancy is still increasing today, most developed countries have fallen into sub-replacement fertility (Lesthaeghe, 2014) (sub-replacement fertility is a total fertility rate which, if sustained over an extended period, leads to population decline. It is roughly 2.1 births per woman in the developed world (Espenshade, 2003)). Birth rates are also falling in LEDCs due to socioeconomic shifts in factors such as lifestyle choices, abortion rates and economic prosperity (Birdsall, 1988) Therefore, according to the UN, world population will rise to more than 9 billion by 2050 and will peak at an estimated 11 billion in 2100 (UN, 2019). This can also be seen in Figure 2, which shows population growth decreasing to less than 0.1% per year by 2100.

With a world population outlook of 9 billion by 2050, it is necessary to think about how we will cope with the growing demand for food. As things stand today, the world already produces enough food to feed 10 billion people (Holt-Gimenez, 2012). However, this is still not enough to meet the real food demand of the global population, which can be seen from the fact that 1 billion people worldwide are hungry (Banerjee, 2011). This makes it clear that food shortages are not just a supply problem, but also a distribution and inequality problem.

People are not just going hungry because of the lack of food supply, but also because they simply cannot afford it. Therefore, one obvious way to reduce world hunger would be to increase affordable food access for poor people. However, this would be a significant strain on governments, especially in developing nations which have a disproportionate number of hungry people, as a direct consequence of poverty (Cohen, 1995). In fact, Cohen even points to graphs that show a direct correlation between the number of poor people in a region and the number of hungry people in a region. While his data is old, we can look at more recent data to test this trend.

Figure 3 shows that countries with a low GDP per capita at PPP (which equates the cost of a good in two separate countries for a fairer evaluation of GDP) have a high Global Hunger Index (GHI) whereas countries with a high GDP per capita at PPP have a significantly lower GHI. (See below for details about how the hunger index is calculated). The benefits of having a wealthier population overall are most profound at a GDP per capita (PPP) up to $10,000 but these benefits seem to tail off beyond that. This can be seen from the fact that most countries on the graph with a GDP per capita (PPP) higher than $10,000 still have a GHI of around 8, regardless of how wealthy they are. This shows that to a certain point, at least, poverty alleviation may well be the best way to reduce global hunger, especially for developing countries with a GDP per capita (PPP) which is lower than $10,000.

However, GDP per capita not only indicates the amount of poverty in a country, but also how wealthy a nation’s government is. This is important, as it makes us realise that while less poverty helps, increased spending for food benefits from a government that is wealthy is also significant. A nation’s wealth and state resources have a strong correlation, however, and therefore increased general development is important. (We can link a high GDP per capita to state resources in the sense that a higher GDP means higher income per person, which means that tax revenue will be higher, and the government will therefore be richer.)

Reduced inequalities and social tensions are also key in maintaining a stable food supply. This is because any form of social unrest such as war can severely disrupt both the distribution and production of food in a country. During the Russian Civil War and the revolution in the late 1910s, for example, agricultural output had sharply declined due instability. Grain output in Russia dropped from 80 million tonnes in 1913 to 46 million tonnes in 1920. It took until 1926 for grain output to reach pre-war levels (Nove, 1992).

Efficient governance is also a factor that cannot be overlooked, as it has often been done in the past. The first Bengal Famine of 1770 (the one not so well known) is an example of this. Inequalities often fuelled by racial biases were prevalent in British India when it was colonised. Regressive taxation was the norm, with poor Indian farmers being forced to pay exorbitant amounts of tax and rent to the local government (Arnold, 2008). This was despite a bad monsoon season meaning a low crop yield in the 1770s. The famine devastated eastern India leaving more than 10 million people dead and setting back agricultural output for decades (Chaudhuri, 1976). In a welfare state, or otherwise, it should be the basic responsibility of a government to provide an efficient allocation of scarce resources in an economy, most importantly that of essentials such as food.

Theoretical Background

Before we delve into this topic further, it is worth exploring the different viewpoint held by economists historically over food security. The two main intellectual viewpoints on the topic are those provided by Thomas R. Malthus, an English scholar and Ester Boserup, a Danish economist.

In his 1798 publication ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’, Malthus argued that any abundance in food supply was only temporary, as the population of the country would immediately grow to take advantage of such an abundance. According to him, it was not general population growth that forced humans to come up with new technologies to boost agricultural output, but rather that this increase in food supply was what had allowed a rise in the population in the first place (Rao, 1994). He argued, therefore, that growth in food supply was only linear, whereas population growth was exponential.

Such an imbalance was what might result in a ‘Malthusian Catastrophe,’ the point where food supply would overtake the demand from an exponentially growing population, resulting in severe food shortages (see figure 4). This would lead to a Malthusian Trap (or population trap), in which population growth would stop due to food shortages and mass starvation. However, some economists do believe that ever since the industrial revolution, the likelihood of falling into a population trap is very small (Clark, 2007).

In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were decades of rapid technological advancement and increasingly mechanized agriculture. The Green Revolution had taken off, greatly boosting crop yields. This led to fears, voiced by American biologist Paul Ehrlich and others that a Malthusian Catastrophe may well occur (Hopkins, 1966). However, in most nations, especially developed ones, population growth was slow enough that food productivity remained higher than the demand.

Boserup countered Malthusianism by her theory of agricultural intensification. In her book ‘The Conditions of Agricultural Growth’, she argued the exact opposite of Malthusianism, that food supply increased as a direct consequence of population growth, instead of the other way round. According to her, fears of food shortages would continue to drive technological advancements to cope with population growth (Boserup, 1975).

Solutions

This makes it clear to us, that while increasing food access and reducing socioeconomic inequalities is important, supply and demand will play the most important role of all if we hope to maintain food security in the future. This brings us two further solutions: increasing food supply and reducing food demand (Smith, 2015). In the next section, we shall examine the ways in which these may be achieved.

First, food supply could be increased through new agricultural techniques and biotechnological advancements that would boost food output per unit area of land. Another way would be do incentivize the agriculture industry by offering greater subsidies and benefits. This would draw more both people and capital to farming. Economic output is driven by four main factors of production: land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship. Optimal food output would be therefore be achieved if agricultural businesses and farmers have access to cheap land, an extensive (and preferably cheap) labour force, investment, and entrepreneurship (in the form of technological advancement to improve crop yields and labour productivity).

It is also important to note that climate change will be an increasing hinderance to food supply, as it will eventually lead to unsustainable temperatures for growing crops in various parts of the world. While global warming would open huge swathes of land for farming in the arctic, it would drastically reduce crop yields in equatorial regions. Furthermore, global warming will create favourable conditions for insects, leading to a dramatic rise in insect populations. Insects, such as locusts can be extremely harmful to crop yields and it is estimated that we will lose between 10 and 25 percent of our crop yield for every degree that overall temperatures rise by (Yong, 2018), and they are predicted to rise by at least two degrees Celsius (Aton, 2017). Only recently, locusts have been devastating huge swathes of land in South Asia and Africa, an infestation which is largely a result of a changing climate. Due to these reasons, any policy that would limit global warming would also help in an achieving a steady increase in food supply.

Second, real food demand could be reduced through several forms of behavioural changes in society. Eliminating wastage of food, for example, would reduce real demand by around 30% (Venkat, 2011). While completely eliminating food wastage is far from realistic, reducing it is plausible. Simple things such as only buying the groceries you need, or only ordering the food you will actually eat at a restaurant can help achieve this. Wastage will also reduce drastically from a greater access to frozen food storage in developing countries (Balaji, 2016). Another way to limit growth in food demand would be for people to shift to more sustainable diets such as veganism, which require far less food and land to be produced. This is because additional crops grown to feed animals and grazing fields will no longer be required. An estimated 1.08 hectares per person per year is required to feed the average American. This is in stark contrast to a vegetarian diet, which only requires 0.13 hectares per person per year (Peters, 2016). Reducing fertility rates to reduce population growth itself will also help in controlling growth in food demand. This can be achieved through radical social reform (such as the One Child policy in China) but these tend to have other negative economic repercussions such as ageing populations. Advertisement campaigns would obviously be less effective, but are a more plausible way to achieve this. Reducing the market share of the biofuels industry would also decrease ‘wastage’ of crops (as an energy source), that could otherwise be used to feed people. This would also decrease food prices, making food more accessible to poorer people.

The idea of reduced food demand also relies upon making sure that food is efficiently redistributed. This means that if food demand in a certain part of the world reduces, assuming supply is constant at this point of time, food is left over. We must take measures to ensure that this food is redistributed to parts of the world facing food shortage.

The third way to mitigate food shortage, which does not involve demand or supply, is simply to increase the accessibility of food. This can be done by reducing food prices, poverty alleviation and increasing food-based humanitarian aid to areas with food shortages. The methods listed above to reduce food demand and increase supply should naturally help bring down food prices, since the market is always able to maximise social good in a system of free trade by pushing the price of the good towards the equilibrium price. (Figure 5 shows the supply and demand curves.) This is because sellers would want to meet the demand as closely as possible. If there is more supply but less demand, this is a waste of resources. If there is less supply but more demand, sellers are not making the most of the high demand in the market and a lot more people cannot access the good. On aggregate, it is the equilibrium price which is most equally beneficial for both businesses and consumers. However, the equilibrium price is likely still too expensive for people in poverty. Therefore, government intervention may be needed.

Governments could introduce price caps on certain food items or even offer free food to the poor, implementing services such as food banks. However, governments will need to be careful about introducing price caps on food items as this will reduce profit potential for private firms, which would therefore reduce investment into new agricultural technologies. This could be a hinderance on technological advancements in agriculture and therefore limit agricultural output. Governments could also allocate greater proportions of their GDP to foreign aid. They could do this by potentially reducing budget spent on other sectors to allow for more money to be sent as foreign aid. The UN has set a target of 0.7% for member countries’ share of GDP allocation to foreign aid. However even developed nations struggle to meet this target. Britain, for example, signed up to the target in 1974, but only met it for the first time in 2013.

Conclusion

In the end, whether food supply will take a Malthusian course or follow a more optimistic outlook predicted by Danish economist Ester Boserup, remains to be seen. However, the world will want to do its best to avoid a Malthusian catastrophe. This will most likely be achieved through a combination of increasing food supply, reducing food demand, increasing food access, and improving the general distribution of scarce resources in an economy. Effective governance and policy will be key in such an endeavour. However, technological innovation will perhaps remain the most significant factor in the fight to maintain food security in the future, and governments as well as individuals should continue to invest heavily in the quaternary sector of the economy.

References

Arnold, D., 2008. Cast Out: Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Perspective. Vagrant India: Famine, Poverty, and Welfare under Colonial Rule ed. s.l.:Ohio University Press.

Aton, A., 2017. Earth Almost Certain to Warm by 2 Degrees Celsius. ClimateWire.

Balaji, M., 2016. Modeling the causes of food wastage in Indian perishable food supply chain. ScienceDirect Resouces, Conservation and Recycling, Volume 114, pp. 153-167.

Banerjee, 2011. More than 1 Billion People are Hungry in the World. Foreign Policy Journal.

Bevan, 2017. Holocene fluctuations in human population demonstrate repeated links to food production and climate. PNAS.

Birdsall, 1988. Fertility and poverty in developing countries. ScienceDirect Journal of Policy Modelling, 10(1).

Boserup, E., 1975. The Impact of Population Growth on Agricultural Output. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 89(2), pp. 257-270.

Chaudhuri, B., 1976. Agricultural Growth in Bengal and Bihar, 1770-1860. Bengal Past and Present 95, no. 1 ed. s.l.:s.n.

Clark, G., 2007. A Farewll to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. s.l.:Princeton University Press.

Cohen, M., 1995. Causes of Hunger. International Food Policy Research Institute, Volume 2020 Brief 19.

Espenshade, 2003. The Surprising Global Variation in Replacement Fertility. Population Research and Policy Review, pp. 575-583.

Holt-Gimenez, 2012. We Already Grow Enough Food for 10 Billion People … and Still Can't End Hunger. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, 36(6).

Hopkins, S., 1966. A Systematic Foray into the Future. s.l.:Barker Books.

Lesthaeghe, 2014. European Sub-Replacement Fertility:, s.l.: Population Studies Centre.

Nove, A., 1992. An Economic History of the USSR 1917–1991. s.l.:Penguin Books.

Peters, 2016. Carrying capacity of U.S. agricultural land: Ten diet scenarios. Elementa.

Rao, M., 1994. An Imagined Reality: Malthusianism, Neo-Malthusianism and Population Myth. Economic and Political Weekly, 29(No. 5).

Smith, P., 2015. Malthus is still wrong: we can feed a world of 9–10 billion, but only by reducing food demand. The Nutrition Society (Cambridge University Press), 74(3), pp. 187-190.

Taiz, L., 2013. Agriculture, plant physiology, and human population growth: past, present, and future. Scielo.

UN, 2019. World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights, s.l.: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.

Venkat, K., 2011. The Climate Change and Economic Impacts of Food Waste in the United States. Journal on Food System Dynamics, 2(4).

Yong, E., 2018. The Very Hot, Very Hungry Caterpillar. The Atlantic Science Journal, Volume Climate change will mean more insects, and less food for humans..