An End-Use Analysis of Global Food Requirements

Abstract

In examining the long-term prospects for global food supply and demand, the balance of research has favoured the examination of global food supply, and not global food demand (Centre for Agricultural and Economic Development, 1967; Chou et al., 1977; Council on Environmental Quality, 1980; Crosson and Anderson, 1992; FAO, 1993; Mitchell and Ingco, 1993; Bongaarts, 1994). Forecasting of global food demand has been limited to an exploration of alternative assumptions about the growth of incomes, prices and population. In particular, the analysis and forecasting of global food demand has used income and price elasticities estimated from historical data, which assume a fixed link between levels of income and levels of food demand. (For expository purposes, this discussion presumes a particular pattern of prices. With changing relative prices, the link between incomes and food demand is more complicated, but this does not change the fundamental argument being made here.)