Papers by Nicolas Alexandratos
American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 1996
Agricultural Systems, 1991
This paper presents the main feature of a recent major study by FAO, hereafter referred to as AT ... more This paper presents the main feature of a recent major study by FAO, hereafter referred to as AT 2000. After outlining the scope and methodology of the study, this paper gives summary results and concludes with a brief identification of the salient aspects of the strategies suggested by the analysis. A purpose of the study was to provide governments and the United Nations with quantified perspectives of world and country group demand for, and production and trade of food and agricultural commodities, including implications for such areas as nutrition, investment, assistance, and research. Pre-publication results of the study were the major source for the food and agricultural component of the UN International Development Strategy (IDS) adopted in 1980. A second purpose was to provide FAO, its member governments, and other qualified users with a detailed quantification on a common pattern of possible alternative paths of change in the agricultural sector of 90 individual developing c...
This paper is a re-make of Chapters 1-3 of the Interim Report World Agriculture: towards 2030/205... more This paper is a re-make of Chapters 1-3 of the Interim Report World Agriculture: towards 2030/2050 (FAO, 2006). In addition, this new paper includes a Chapter 4 on production factors (land, water, yields, fertilizers). Revised and more recent data have been used as basis for the new projections, as follows: (a) updated historical data from the Food Balance Sheets 1961-2007 as of June 2010; (b) undernourishment estimates from The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2010 (SOFI) and related new parameters (CVs, minimum daily energy requirements) are used in the projections; (c) new population data and projections from the UN World Population Prospects - Revision of 2008; (d) new GDP data and projections from the World Bank; (e) a new base year of 2005/2007 (the previous edition used the base year 1999/2001); (f) updated estimates of land resources from the new evaluation of the Global Agro-ecological Zones (GAEZ) study of FAO and IIASA. Estimates of land under forest and in protected...
The views expressed in this information product are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily... more The views expressed in this information product are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Thanks to the colleagues in FAO's Markets and Trade Division preparing the projections of the 2009 OECD/FAO Agricultural Outlook for making available preliminary results of ongoing work. 2 Consultant to FAO, formerly Chief of FAO's Global Perspective Studies Unit.
Food Policy, 1997
Chinese official statements foresee little further increases in per caput demand for cereals for ... more Chinese official statements foresee little further increases in per caput demand for cereals for food and non-food uses, despite expected significant growth in livestock production. International comparisons indicate that China's direct food consumption of cereals per caput will likely remain at fairly high levels and consumption for all other uses may increase further. At a low population growth rate, the
European Review of Agricultural Economics, 1982
This article describes a model developed and used to estimate power input requirements by source ... more This article describes a model developed and used to estimate power input requirements by source for increasing agricultural production in the developing countries. Production increases are defined for 28 crops, each of which is grown in one or more of six classes of rainfed and irrigated land at specified yield levels. The estimation and analysis is carried out for each one of 90 developing countries, which together account for 98% of the population of the developing world, not counting China. Given crop production increases specified as above, the model calculates first the requirements for total power input and subsequently distributes it to the three sources of power (labour, machinery and draught animals). The results show that for a 3.5% annual increase in crop production in the aggregate of the 90 developing countries 1980–2000 (the growth rate 1966–81 was 2.9%) the total power input (in terms of man day equivalents) should grow at 2.2% and the labour input at 2.1%, implying an employment elasticity of 0.52. Mechanization should advance most rapidly in the higher income developing countries (Latin America, Near East), while in all regions, animal traction would be substituted by machinery.
Agricultural Economics, 1996
Lester Brown's recent writings about trends in China's food consumption, production and rapidly r... more Lester Brown's recent writings about trends in China's food consumption, production and rapidly rising import requirements and his predictions that the world is running out of potential to increase production of cereals received wide publicity in the press. They increased awareness of the problem among the public, which was stimulated by recent declines in world cereals production per capita, falling stocks and sharp rises in world market prices. This paper is an attempt on my part to extract a coherent picture of what Brown says about China and the world and examine it in the light of what we know about this country and of possible developments in the world as a whole. I make the following conclusions. I. Brown misjudges China's potential to maintain and indeed increase cereals production because he misinterprets the data on land losses (he treats diversion of land from cereals to, mainly, other crops and aquaculture as if such land were lost to food production), he ignores new data which indicate that China has more agricultural land than reported in official statistics and his projected numbers do not account for responses on the part of producers, consumers and government policy to an increasing scarcity of products and rising prices. 2. The analogies he draws with the experiences of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are inappropriate. 3. China will probably be a growing net importer of cereals but at levels much below those projected by Brown. 4. World production of cereals may indeed grow at a lower rate than in the long-term past (but not as low as that projected by Brown) which could be sufficient to accommodate China's growing import requirements and the probable ones of other countries. 5. The world food problem is one of persistence of very low food consumption levels and high incidence of undernutrition in many developing countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The persistence of severe food insecurity problems reflects not so much constraints in increasing food production in the world as whole but development failures (often agricultural development failures) and the persistence of poverty in certain countries. 1 The views expressed in this paper are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of FAO. All data in this paper are from FAO, FAOSTAT (most of them are available on the Internet: http:/ jwww jfao.org) except when otherwise indicated.
Public Health Nutrition, 2006
ObjectiveTo put the debate on the Mediterranean diet in context by highlighting historical and pr... more ObjectiveTo put the debate on the Mediterranean diet in context by highlighting historical and prospective changes in the level and composition of food consumption in the world and key Mediterranean countries.DesignData from FAO's food balance sheets are used to illustrate historical evolution. Projections to 2030 are presented from FAO's recent and ongoing work on exploring world food and agriculture futures.SettingInternational.Results and conclusionsMany developing countries are undergoing diet transitions bringing them closer to the diets prevalent in the richer countries, i.e. with more energy-dense foods. There follows an increase in the incidence of diet-related non-communicable diseases, which are superimposed on the health problems related to undernutrition that still afflict them. In parallel, many low-income countries are making little progress towards raising food consumption levels necessary for good nutrition and food security. Wider adoption of food consumptio...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1999
The world has been making progress in improving food security, as measured by the per person avai... more The world has been making progress in improving food security, as measured by the per person availability of food for direct human consumption. However, progress has been very uneven, and many developing countries have failed to participate in such progress. In some countries, the food security situation is today worse than 20 years ago. The persistence of food insecurity does not reflect so much a lack of capacity of the world as a whole to increase food production to whatever level would be required for everyone to have consumption levels assuring satisfactory nutrition. The world already produces sufficient food. The undernourished and the food-insecure persons are in these conditions because they are poor in terms of income with which to purchase food or in terms of access to agricultural resources, education, technology, infrastructure, credit, etc., to produce their own food. Economic development failures account for the persistence of poverty and food insecurity. In the major...
Population and Development Review, 2005
NOTE: "High" is defined here as a growth rate of 1.8 percent per annum or higher, that is, at lea... more NOTE: "High" is defined here as a growth rate of 1.8 percent per annum or higher, that is, at least twice that of the developing-country average for the same 50-year period. a Countries are listed in two blocks. The first 12 countries have a large share (over 30 percent) of GDP originating in agriculture. The remaining 7 countries have less than 30 percent of their GDP from agriculture (see text). b Persons per thousand/year. SOURCES: Cols. 1-4, 12 (UN 2003a); Cols. 5-6 (UN 2004); Cols. 7-11 (UN 2003b); Cols. 13-16 (UN 2005). TABLE 2 Socioeconomic characteristics of countries with high population growth rates in 2000-50 Agric. Food consumption 1961-2002 Under-Cereals share (kcal/person/day) c nutrition d self-sufficiency e (%) HDI 2002 g in GDP b Avg. (% of pop.) External Develop.
Population and Development Review, 2008
FIGURE 2 World cereals production and consumption (million tons),
Food Policy, 1995
Abstract A number of recent statements in the press and the professional literature signal the co... more Abstract A number of recent statements in the press and the professional literature signal the considerable increases in world production of cereals required to meet the growth of demand. They rightly point out the urgent need to increase investment in the agriculture of the developing countries, particularly in agricultural research, to meet the challenge. But the magnitude of the likely increases in world demand varies among authors as does the prospective role of the developed countries as net exporters of cereals. We examine the alternative projections and conclude that (a) a doubling of world demand by 2025 is an unlikely outcome and a doubling of demand of the developing countries is within the realm of realism, though optimistic, and (b) the exports of cereals from the developed countries will continue to grow but the huge quantities visualized by some authors are overly exaggerated.
European Review of Agricultural Economics, 1994
European Review of Agricultural Economics, 1994
Lester Brown's recent writings about trends in China's food consumption, production and rapidly r... more Lester Brown's recent writings about trends in China's food consumption, production and rapidly rising import requirements and his predictions that the world is running out of potential to increase production of cereals received wide publicity in the press. They increased awareness of the problem among the public, which was stimulated by recent declines in world cereals production per capita, falling stocks and sharp rises in world market prices. This paper is an attempt on my part to extract a coherent picture of what Brown says about China and the world and examine it in the light of what we know about this country and of possible developments in the world as a whole. I make the following conclusions. I. Brown misjudges China's potential to maintain and indeed increase cereals production because he misinterprets the data on land losses (he treats diversion of land from cereals to, mainly, other crops and aquaculture as if such land were lost to food production), he ignores new data which indicate that China has more agricultural land than reported in official statistics and his projected numbers do not account for responses on the part of producers, consumers and government policy to an increasing scarcity of products and rising prices. 2. The analogies he draws with the experiences of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are inappropriate. 3. China will probably be a growing net importer of cereals but at levels much below those projected by Brown. 4. World production of cereals may indeed grow at a lower rate than in the long-term past (but not as low as that projected by Brown) which could be sufficient to accommodate China's growing import requirements and the probable ones of other countries. 5. The world food problem is one of persistence of very low food consumption levels and high incidence of undernutrition in many developing countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The persistence of severe food insecurity problems reflects not so much constraints in increasing food production in the world as whole but development failures (often agricultural development failures) and the persistence of poverty in certain countries.
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Papers by Nicolas Alexandratos