Food Security and World Trade Prospects

Abstract

Food security depends on available world supplies of food, the income of the designated population, and the population's access to the available supplies. Consequently, though seldom recognized in national food security policies, there is a direct relationship between food security, world trade in food, and the domestic policies that govern access to international markets for food. On all three scores, I believe we can be optimistic about improvements in world food security over the next quarter century. Over the next quarter century, the world's supply of food will grow somewhat more rapidly than will the demand for it, leading to lower real prices of food. Thus, the trend of food prices, as measured by grain prices, is likely to continue the trend of the current century, though at a slower rate of decline.' The remarkable reduction in the international price of grain that has occurred in this century is given all too little emphasis in discussions of the world food situation, certainly so in the discussions of the food pessimists. I am confident that the real per capita incomes of the majority of the population in the developing countries will continue to increase, contributing to an improvement in food security. Finally, I believe that, with the changes in agricultural policies in the major industrial countries, world trade in farm products, especially grains, will be further liberalized in the future. In addition, more and more developing countries are reducing barriers to trade, thus increasing access to world food supplies. Thus, all the broad trends point o an improvement in world food security and a reduction in the number of persons adversely affected by both long-term or short-term inadequate access to food. This does not mean that in every country food security will improve. Some governments may continue to follow national and trade policies related to food that restrict domestic food production, limit the growth of per capita incomes, and restrict access to the available world food supplies. When this happens, food security and adequacy will not be im roved or not improved as much as they po entially could be. At this time, there can be little doubt that the poor performance of agriculture and the insecurity of food supplies in sub-Saharan Africa over the past quarter century have been due primarily to inappropriate policies-to policies that discriminated against agriculture and resulted in large-scale governmental interventions in international trade. Misgovernment plus civil and ethnic wars have exacted and continue to exact a