LONDON, U.K. (Reuters) – The world’s poorest nations are likely to become increasingly dependent on food imports while global exports become more concentrated in a few countries, says a United Nations economist.
“In many of these (least developed countries), not only are they becoming more import dependent but they are becoming less able to afford the imports,” said Alexander Sarris, director of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s commodities and trade division.
Supplies will become more focused in countries such as Russia and Brazil, which have unused fertile land, he added.
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“Russia has huge potential. Russia can be the bread basket of Europe and possibly the world,” Sarris said.
“These regions (Russia, South America) may obtain more strategic importance for food.”
Sarris said the concentration of production in some areas will lead to an increase in global trade.
“Despite countries calling for food self-sufficiency, it looks like we are going towards more trade.”
However, he said agriculture offered a much-needed opportunity to generate growth in developing nations.
“We have to be able to support their income-growing capacities. Agriculture is an obvious place to start in many of these places.”
He pointed to the successful expansions of the agricultural sectors in China and India.
Sarris said the use of agricultural inputs in parts of Africa has been declining as financing becomes a major problem, partly because of credit constraints.
He said many government monopoly purchasing agencies had been abolished in recent years as markets were liberalized. These agencies often provided farmers with credit for seeds and other inputs.
“The link was broken,” he said.
“Institutionally, there haven’t been many new ways (found) to make that linkage. Credit has been difficult.”
He said multinational companies in some sectors, such as cocoa, were beginning to seek partnerships with groups of producers to secure future supplies.
“This is a very welcome development.”
Sarris said foreign investment in agriculture was also a positive development in countries such as Zambia, which has designated certain areas for development and invited investment on a massive scale.
“There are quite a few risks involved (for foreign investors). I think we will see a concentrated big push into specific regions,” he said.
Sarris saw potential for African and Asian countries to provide feed stocks for biofuel or to generate electricity.
“This is one obvious market to expand production a lot and provides increased incomes in the areas these are produced,” he said.
Crops such as cassava could be grown, processed into pellets locally and then shipped to Europe to be burned in power plants.
However, such expansion could require partnerships between the governments of the respective countries in Africa and Europe and development aid to build the necessary infrastructure.
Sarris said China was likely to emerge as a net deficit area for food, He expected the country to increasingly focus on labour rather than land intensive crops such as horticulture, and become more dependent on imports of field crops such as wheat and soybeans.
Some economists and scientists have expressed concern about how to feed a growing world population in the future. Food production will have to grow by 70 percent by 2050, while at the same time the world will tackle climate change and a growing water shortage.
Sarris said production in the previous 40 years had risen by 150 percent and pointed to the huge potential to expand yields in many areas just by using existing technologies.
“I think there will be challenges, occasional crises, but nothing we can’t deal with,” he said.
