Global population growth of nearly 50 percent in the next 45 years will challenge policymakers around the world as never before, a leading agricultural figure said last week.
Speaking at the World Agricultural Forum in US, James B. Bolger, former prime minister of New Zealand, said in the keynote address that “no issue will test the mettle of leaders more than accommodating and feeding an extra 2,6 billion people by 2050 – and alongside that, responding to the very challenging policy implications of aging and declining populations in the developed world.”
About 250 representatives of agribusiness corporations, academia, governments and non-governmental organizations convened at the Chase Park Plaza hotel for a three-day conference to explore issues relating to feeding the growing world population, opening markets for agricultural commodities and products and spurring development in less-developed nations.
Leonard J. Guarraia, chairman of the forum, asked “How do we keep people fed and happy? Two-thousand, twenty-five is tomorrow in world time.”
James B.Bolgers government eliminated farm subsidies in five years. He said, that while population in major industrial nations is expected to decline over the next few decades the population of the 50 “least developed” countries is projected to more than double, moving from 800 million to 1,7 billion in 2050.
And, while the global life expectancy was 46 years in 1950, Bolger said, it will hit 75 years in 2050. For wealthier countries, the age will be 82, compared to 66 in poorer countries.
For large agricultural producers such as the United States, the only chance of expanding markets is in low-income countries, said Robert L. Thompson, Gardner Chair of Agricultural Policy at the University of Illinois.
But those countries, which make up the majority of the 140 nations in the World Trade Organization, will have to see agricultural trade issues in ways that favor them before they will agree to changes in WTO policies, he said.
For example, many of the poorer countries that are dependent on one or two commodities, such as cotton, rice and sugar, are hurt by subsidies to those crops by large producer countries like the United States. So they will continue to try to end those subsidies to help their own farmers.
As their per capita incomes rise, so will their demand for food from abroad, Thompson said. The greatest growth in demand comes when daily income rises from one to two dollar a day to 8 to 9 dollar a day, he said.
To gauge the size of the potential market in agricultural trade, Thompson flashed slides that show that more than half of Chinas 1,2 billion people live on less than two dollar a day, and 80 percent of Indias population live on a similar income.
Thompson, a former World Bank official, said if the wealthiest nations want to raise income levels in poorer countries, they must change national policies such as subsidies and trade barriers that hurt the poorer countries.
Kilde: The Push Journal
