EDMONTON — It is an adage of real estate investors that “they aren’t making any more land.”
But the world’s farmers have significantly increased the amount of land devoted to crops.
The high grain and oilseed prices of recent years, supported by rising food demand from Asia and increasing production of biofuel, encouraged the conversion.
“The remarkable thing is the total crop land in all the world was about the same in 2002 as it was in 1980,” David Jackson, an agricultural economist with LMC International in Wales speaking at FarmTech in Edmonton.
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“For 22 years, we didn’t need any more farmland, and yields met demand growth.
“From 2002 to 2012 we (created) 200 million acres of new farmland around the world. That profound change in agriculture has increased our productive capacity.”
Emerging economies, led by China and its 1.3 billion people, have created demand for more than just fuel.
Meat consumption has jumped nine-fold since 2000, creating demand for livestock that eat feed grains and oilseed meal.
“Fifteen years ago, China exported 16 million tonnes of corn,” Jackson noted.
However in recent years it has imported corn.
China’s soybean imports have grown from about 25 million tonnes 10 years ago to 74 million this year.
Demand is also up in South Asia and elsewhere in the emerging world, and the result is that 100 million new acres of corn and beans and 7.5 million of wheat are now being cropped.
Jackson said it is unlikely that farmers will reduce production once the money for establishing those new fields is spent, even when crop prices fall.
So crop price recovery will have to wait for demand to catch up to production.
michael.raine@producer.com
