Global food balances and food security

Abstract

The major structural imbalance in the current global food scene — surpluses in developed countries and deficits in developing countries — offers opportunity for substantial progress in assuring food security in both the long and the short run. To avail of this opportunity requires an understanding of the close connection between food supplies and purchasing power to purchase food. Massive investment in rural infrastructure is a major component of long-term food security. Since infrastructure is efficiently produced by labor-intensive processes, food as a wage good is an important input, and the global economy would appear to be under-using it from an efficiency point of view. In the short run, food-for-work offers opportunity for immediate increase in food security, as do food subsidy programs. It is essential that a large complex of institutions be developed if the current global scene is to result in increased food security. It will take time to develop those structures, even though food is available now.