A guide to LDC food balance projections

Abstract

This paper compares the results of several studies that have calculated projections of food deficits for low income countries toward the year 2000. Included in the comparison is work done at Iowa State University (Blakeslee et al, 1973), International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI, 1977), The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO, 1981), The Global 2000 Report to the President‘ (Barney et al, 1980), ‘The Future of the World Economy’ (Leontief et al, 1977), the ‘Model of International Relations in Agriculture’(Linnemann et al, 1979) as well as work undertaken under the sponsorship of the Club of Rome (Forrester, 1971; Meadows et al, 1972; Mesarovic and Pestel, 1974; Herrera et al, 1976). Almost without exception, these studies foresee a future for the food economies of less developed countries (LDC’s) that is characterised by rising deficits of consumption over production and/or increasing real food prices. These projections are found to be at variance with observed trends in the post-war era, and events occurring since the time the studies were conducted. Many of the available food deficit projection exercises were initiated in the midst of the food crisis of 1973/74. It is our view that a preponderance of attention on supply-side factors, at the expense of a thorough investigation of transitory demand-side influences, was characteristic of most of the studies reviewed, and that this incomplete diagnosis of the causes of the crisis contributed to a bias in the projections.