Food Output Research Articles

Estimates of Potential Effects of New Technology on Agriculture in Punjab, India

AbstractNew high‐yielding varieties of crops are now available in developing countries. Their potential for improving food and fiber supplies is limited by the availability of inputs such as fertilizer, irrigation, and pesticides. The effects of present, projected, and nonrestrictive supplies of fertilizer are estimated for Punjab State, India. Results indicate that large amounts are needed over and above current plan targets in order to maximize food output and farm incomes. Further, changes in price policy will be necessary to maintain production of crops where no improved‐yield‐potential varieties are available. Uniform allocations of scarce fertilizer supplies within a state will not maximize agricultural production and incomes.

The Food Potential of Developing Nations

tural production in the United States up to that time was inadequate to keep up with the projected demands for food and a better diet to be generated by high birth rates and rapid economic growth. Within a few years, the Fifth Plate thesis had been discarded. Surpluses rather than shortages became the national concern. The threat to the American diet subsided as farm output rose more rapidly under the thrust of postwar technology and the rate of population growth and demand for food began to slow. Now we are considering the elements of population and food in the wider context of the less-developed world and the higher stakes of a potential world food shortage. As background, I will review briefly the historical experience in the population-food race, treating the less-developed free nations as a group but keeping in mind the American experience that the past is not always the key to the future. Then I will move on to considering as a case study the potential of India for feeding its own in the future. This seems fair enough, since India has one-third of the population in the less-developed free world, a high population growth rate representative of most LDC's, a diet among the poorest (roughly 10 percent below the minimum energy standard), and a disappointing food production record in recent years which required massive imports of grain under P.L. 480. Much of the food-crisis syndrome hangs on India. Most other countries are conceded a better chance. If India can make it, the world food problem will at worst be quite manageable. The Historical Experience of the LDC's The FAO measurements of population and food-output trends during the period 1953-1963 are shown in Table 1. Taking the whole 10-year period, food output in the LDC's (excluding communist Asia) rose faster than population. In fact, food output rose faster than in the developed countries (3.0 percent per year compared with 2.4 percent). Even with a high rate of population growth (2.3 percent in the LDC's compared with 1.3 percent for the developed countries), food production per capita

The world outlook for conventional agriculture. More emphasis is needed on farm price policy and plant research if future world food needs are to be met.

1) The worldwide demand for food will continue to be strong in the coming decades. Two forces-rapidly growing population and, in much of the world, rapidly rising incomes-are expected to result in increases in the demand for food even more rapid than those that have occurred during the past. 2) Conventional agriculture has assured an adequate food supply for the economically advanced one-third of the world. The challenge now is to assure an adequate food supply for the remaining two-thirds, where population is now increasing at the rate of 1 million people per week and where malnutrition is already widespread. 3) Economically feasible prospects for significantly expanding the world's area of cultivated land in the 1960's and 1970's are limited and largely confined to sub-Saharan Africa and the Amazon Basin. Even here, agronomic problems will limit the rate of expansion. When the cost of desalting seawater is substantially reduced-probably not before the late 1970's or early 1980's at best-it may become feasible to irrigate large areas of desert. 4) Given the limited possibilities for expanding the area of land under cultivation, most of the increases in world food needs must be met, for the foreseeable future, by raising the productivity of land already under cultivation. Food output per acre, rather static throughout most of history, has begun to increase rapidly in some of the more advanced countries in recent decades. All of the increases in food production over the past quarter century in North America, western Europe, and Japan have come from increasing the productivity of land already under cultivation. The area under cultivation has actually declined. 5) Achieving dramatic gains in land productivity requires a massive investment of capital and the widespread adoption of new technology. A similar effort must now be made in the less-developed nations if these nations are to feed their people. The most important single factor influencing this rate of investment is food prices, more particularly the relationship between the price farmers receive for their food products and the cost of modern inputs such as fertilizer. 6) In some of the more-developed countries where per-acre yields have been rising for a long time, there is now evidence that the rate of yield increase may be slowing. Nonrecurring inputs may have made their maximum contribution to output in the case of some crops, pushing yield levels past the middle of the S-shaped logistic curve. Although this cannot be determined with any certainty, the possibility that the middle of the curve has been passed in some instances should be taken into account in viewing the long-term future. 7) If the rate of increase in yield per acre does in fact begin to slow in some of the agriculturally advanced countries, additional pressure will be put on the less-developed countries-which have much of the world's unrealized food-production potential-to meet the continuing future increases in world food needs. 8) Man has not yet been able to bypass the process of photosynthesis in the production of food. This dependence on photosynthesis plays a significant role in determining the upper levels of the S-shaped yield curve. Additional research is urgently needed to increase the photosynthetic efficiency of crops and to raise the upper levels of economically feasible yields.

Increasing World Food Output

Increasing World Food Output

Extension principles and practices as guide to Agricultural Production

Agriculture constitutes the basic industry in India and provides the means of livelihood to majority of the population. It is a key industry which strengthens the national economy and creates wealth. The entire country is fully conscious of the gap that continues to exist between the production and self-sufficiency, not only in food output but also in producing raw-materials for the development of the industries. Agriculture being the primary source for the development of the industry, significance is being given by assigning priorities in all our national and state plans. The food production and raw-material production are not keeping pace with the population growth as well as industrial advancement. In addition to keep pace, the country has to create exportable surplus to earn foreign exchange.

The Food Resources of the Capitalist World

AbstractThe author discusses a major research program now under way at the Institute of Geography, covering food production and consumption in the developed industrial nations and in the newly independent countries. Under investigation are ways of expanding food resources in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America; overcoming the food deficit and reliance on food imports of African countries; and creating a diversified agriculture combining both export crops to finance economic development and food output for domestic consumption.

An Interregional Programming Model for Agricultural Planning in India

This paper includes development of an application of a linear programming model for agricultural planning in India. The objective is one of allocating production of 16 major crops among regions in a manner to maximize food output from a given collection of resources. Welfare economic restraints are included to assure that cultivators in all regions are left equally well or better off in income level. The programming results provide for important reallocations of production among regions. They result in a projected gain of around 12.5 percent in total food production from given resources, even when limits are placed on the magnitude of shift which can take place. A series of implied prices are derived from the dual solution, to indicate the magnitudes of subsidy needed to attain minimum income restraints in each region.

Fertilizer Pool Would Help Food Output

Fertilizer Pool Would Help Food Output

Marketable Surplus Function: A Study of the Behaviour of West Pakistan Farmers

Food shortages have become a harassing problem for Pakistan. Though foodgrains, received under the provision of United States Public Law 480, have reduced the immediacy of the problem considerably, it is necessary that this breathing space provided by aid be used to understand the nature and magnitude of the problem and to attempt solutions of it. One aspect of the problem is, of course, the general inadequacy of the total production to meet the overall food requirements. The general concern about increasing the volume of total production, and the whole range of policies directed towards this, spotlight one facet of the problem. The other aspect is the release from subsistence consumption of increasing amounts of food output for the market as more and more people are transferred to the urban centres and made dependent on the market. Success in solving the first aspect of the problem may not necessarily lead to any relaxation of the second.

The Inflationary Implications of Crop Failure

In discussions of the economic problems of underdeveloped countries, the thinking of layman and of professional economists often diverges widely. Nowhere is this disagreement more patent than in the case of food production and its effects upon the price level. In government agencies, newspapers, and public discussions, the view that bad crops "cause" inflation is ubiquitous, while economists are usually quick to point out the difference between movements in relative prices and the general price level. The economists' view is sophisticated and requires elaboration. For nearly a century, there has been a division of economic problems into two basic categories:' those concerned with the value and production of particular commodities relative to other commodities; and those concerned with the total production of an economy and the general price level of the output. There is now an extensive theory of the effect of a decline in the output of a commodity (e.g., food) upon its price. Under most conditions, one can safely predict that an autonomous1 reduction in the output of food will induce a rise in the price of food relative to other prices. But there is no reason to expect a rise in the general price level; for that is determined by another theory a theory which does not concern itself with production of particular commodities, but rather with total production in the economy. If food output were a small part of this total production, the economist would say that the overall price level is not affected by a decline in food output; the rise in food prices, even if large, would be offset by slight declines in other prices2 so that the general price level would remain stable. Food production in Pakistan is, however, no small part of total output.

The Role of Farm Management in Underdeveloped Countries

N THIS PAPER the thesis is advanced that in the economic development of primarily agricultural economies the most lucrative place to employ labor more fully and productively is right on the farms. This improvement in resource management on the farm would also step up total food production. It is not implied that agriculture can employ productively all the underemployed labor in low-income, highly populated countries-the quantity of it is too vast. Nor would it be the thing to do from the standpoint of long run development. But in a primarily agricultural economy, agriculture is viewed as one of the essential starting points in the process of development. It is therefore argued further that the remaining excess labor, along with the additional food, can be converted into capital for general economic development. Thus farm management can contribute in several ways-by showing how labor on farms can be employed more productively, by stepping up food output, and by facilitating capital formation.

Food and Agriculture Organization

The 1957 annual report of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) stated that the main trends in the world food and agricultural situation in previous years had been continued during 1956/57. Agricultural production as a whole and food production had again increased by about three percent. In the less developed areas (the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America) food production since 1952 had risen slightly above that in the world as a whole; these areas had shown an increase of twenty percent in net food output in comparison with averages for 1948–52, while the developed regions (North America, western Europe, and Oceania) had shown an increase of fifteen percent. In 1957/58, the report predicted, world agricultural production would continue to increase at approximately the same rate as in the past.

Sterling Convertibility: A Canadian View

THE Commonwealth Economic Conference met in London last December, one conclusion reached was that the gold and dollar reserves of the sterling area would have to be greatly strengthened before sterling could be made convertible again. To anyone who looks at the sterling area's gold and dollar position this must seem obvious. After allowing for the rise in prices, the present reserves, held by Britain on behalf of the sterling area as a whole, are less than one-third of their level in 1938. Canada's own reserves of United States dollars are almost as large as those of the sterling area as a whole, yet our commodity trade is only about one-fifth as large. Larger reserves are needed for two reasons. Inadequate reserves undermine confidence in sterling and lead to speculative movements against it. Speculation against sterling has been an important factor in each of Britain's three post-war balance of payments crises. Further, because her reserves are so weak Britain and other members of the sterling area have repeatedly had to take emergency action, mainly in the form of imposing import restrictions, to stop any further decline in reserves. But in the long run these import restrictions, though immediately necessary to stop the drain on reserves, may have served to worsen the sterling area's dollar problem. For these import restrictions are applied mainly to luxuries and non-essentials. This means that all the non-essential industries within the sterling area receive 100 per cent, protection against imports from the dollar area, whereas all the necessities like food and raw materials must still face the competition of dollar imports. This serves to encourage exactly the wrong industries. Instead of increasing the output of food and raw materials and other dollar-saving imports it diverts resources into luxury and nonessential lines of output. With more adequate reserves Britain and other members of the sterling area might have had time to take more

Some National Aspects of Beef Production

The recent war has occasioned even greater changes in agricultural production than followed World War I. Lack of man power and draught power reduced the area of cultivation : lack of fertiliser and manure reduced the yields per acre: lack of feeding stuffs reduced livestock numbers and the output of meat, milk and eggs. This was precipitated at a time in history when it was already becoming evident that, despite improvement in agricultural technique, the output of food per acre over the world was rising comparatively little. The pre-war agricultural problem, never clearly seen until recent years, of expanding production to meet the requirements of an increasing population, has become gravely accentuated by the additional problem of agricultural recovery following the second world war.

Technological Advance and the Structure of American Agriculture

AMERICAN agriculture has grown in two main ways. The first was primarily settlement-the expansion of farmers into new areas of a wild continent. The second is technological advance-the creation of more fruitful ways of making the means of life. The settlement form of growth was by far the more important until the close of the nineteenth century. From 1880 to 1900 American agriculture turned out a 25-percent larger volume of production through technological advance as reflected in production per worker. But it brought forth a 34-percent output expansion through the settlement of some 303 million new acres (including 116 million crop acres) on the part of 2.3 million new farm workers.' Except for the Plains and the West, settlement virtually ceased to be a form of agricultural growth after 1900, especially after 1920. Yet, in terms of food and fibre output for human use, agriculture grew faster than ever, expanding about 50 percent in the last quarter century. As a mode of agricultural growth, then, the settlement era is practically dead. Yet it is very much alive in terms of the prevailing structure of our national farm plant and our traditional aims of life. For our present pattern of farms which was born of the settlement era, as well as many ideals and values that were first wrought out and stabilized in our national character by the older disciplines of that period, are now being gnawed at by the very technological advances through which farm people today are so greatly increasing their productive power and removing the drudgery of their toil. The three-century conquest of the wild expanse from the Atlantic to the Pacific outwardly took the form, for the most part, of owner-operated family farms within reach of any pair of willing hands. The backfire of this method of conquest into the imagination of the people became the ideal and ambition for an ever-expanding

Soviet Scientific Work on Potatoes

A LONG cable has been sent by Prof. Lysenko, president of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, to Sir John Russell, chairman of the Anglo-Soviet Scientific Collaboration Committee, describing recent results of Soviet scientific work on the potato crop which in the U.S.S.R., as in Great Britain, is now of very great importance as human food. The message begins by stating that the Odessa Institute of Genetics and Selection, of which he was for a long time director and where much of this work was begun, had been evacuated before the Germans captured the city. The investigations now being made under Lysenko's general direction by various scientific bodies, like all other scientific investigations in the U.S.S.R., are exclusively directed to the war effort; in this case to help the Collective and State farms increase the output of food and raw materials. Genetics, he says, is the science dealing with the nature of the living organism and its reactions to various environmental influences at different stages of its development. The better the laws of inheritance are understood, the easier it is to govern the nature of the plant organism and modify it in any desirable direction, thereby creating new plants possessing characters useful to man.

Agriculture in Eastern Europe

I. Overcrowding of the land, 170. — Importance of agricultural problem of eastern Europe. Density of population. Large proportion of rural population; its high density. Low yields. Per capita grain production. II. Consequences as to standard of living and food supply, 174. — Predominantly vegetable diet. Small surplus after supplying wants of producer. Live stock. Prewar grain exports. Reduction of food output during war; continuation of similar causes after war. Widespread food shortage. The Russian famine. III. Prospects for recovery, 180. — Conditions favoring recovery. Importance of political conditions. Increased crops of 1921 except in Russia; exports of food; effect on currency exchange. Probably slower recovery of Russia. IV. Prospect for progress in peasant agriculture, 183. — Vicious circle of overcrowding, poverty, ignorance. Effects of overcrowding on agricultural methods. Shallow plowing. Unsatisfactory crop rotation. Scattered holdings — their explanation and consequences. Mir system. Beneficial effects of democracy. Rapid progress improbable. V. The large estates, 190. — Large-scale operation. Superior efficiency. Polish estates. Agrarian reform — division of estates. Direct gain to peasant overestimated. Measures already taken. Ultimate effects, especially on peasant psychology.

Manuring for Higher Crop Production

THE problem of increasing the food output of British farms is no new one, but has been rendered vastly more acute by the stern necessities of war-time. The solution of the problem lies obviously along one or both of two lines: either the farmer must increase his area under cultivation, or he must obtain more from the existing area. To the layman the former alternative may appear to promise the larger results, but its practical application in war-time is beset with grave difficulties, which tend only to increase with the prolongation of the war. The efforts of the farmer must thus be concentrated more and more in the direction of the second alternative, endeavouring by improved cultivation, readjusted crossing, and more liberal and rational feeding of his crops to utilise to the fullest extent the capabilities of his soil.