The World Food Outlook: A Review Essay

Abstract

The midl990s witnessed one of the periodic resurgences of interest in the alleged Malthusian predicament of humankind. Characteristically, The Economist, not usually given to journalistic hype, carried three times in 18 months major stories on the world situation featuring the words starve and food crisis' in their titles (10 June and 25 November 1995, 16 November 1996). The occasion for the resurgence of interest was provided by the virtual stagnation of world cereals production in the first half of the 1990s and the consequent reduction in stocks and sharp rises in world market prices. Additional impetus was provided by the holding of the World Food Summit in late 1996, which raised awareness that all was not well with world security even before the recent price rises and the reduction in stocks. In the same period a number of studies on world projections to 2010 or 2020 were under preparation (see below). They were published in 1995-97, but early versions of some of them (including the one under review) were available from late 1993. Their findings indicate a broad consensus that the demand-supply balance for the world as a whole would be favorable and indeed the tendency would be for production growth to exceed that of effective demand at constant real prices. Yet these studies, which had been completed by or before 1995, appeared at a time when the signs of emerging scarcities in world cereals markets had become visible in the form of sharp price rises in 1995-96. As such, these studies sounded a discordant note. In its May 1996 News Release (Vital Signs Brief 96-2), the Worldwatch Institute was critical of these findings and predicted persistence of scarcities in the long term (for a critique of the Worldwatch position, see Alexandratos 1996a). The broad thrust of these studies leads me to believe that their authors, had they been writ-