POPULATION-GROWTH AND FOOD-PRODUCTION - RECENT GLOBAL AND REGIONAL TRENDS

Considerable anxiety has recently been expressed that world cereal production has failed to keep up with population growth. The author argues that the downturn in global per capita cereal production since 1984 is largely explained by reductions in cereal cropland, especially in traditional grain-exporting countries, conditioned by the low price of cereals on the world market. In the most populous developing regions, cereal output has continued to increase faster than population growth. However, per capita cereal production has declined in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Since cereals are only one category of foodstuff, trends in indexes of overall food production are also examined. These indicate that food output in the world and most of its regions continues to increase faster than population growth. Although complacency is inappropriate, recent trends provide no support for the current neo-Malthusian view that average levels of food production per person will deteriorate in the coming years.