Economic Growth, Convergence, and World Food Demand and Supply
In projecting global food demand to 2050, much attention has been given to rising demand due to the projected population increase from the current 7.4 billion to more than 9 billion. An increasingly important source of the increase in food demand i...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/519861511794565022/Economic-growth-convergence-and-world-food-demand-and-supply http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28918 |
| Summary: | In projecting global food demand to
2050, much attention has been given to rising demand due to
the projected population increase from the current 7.4
billion to more than 9 billion. An increasingly important
source of the increase in food demand is per capita demand
growth induced by rising income per person. Since the
proportion of income spending on food decreases as incomes
rise, growth in global food demand will be greater if
incomes grow faster in developing countries than in
high-income countries. Such a pattern of income convergence
has become established in recent years, making it important
to assess the implications for food demand and supply. Using
a resource-based measure of food that accounts for the much
higher production costs associated with dietary upgrading,
this paper concludes that per capita demand growth is likely
to be a more important driver of food demand than population
growth between now and 2050. Using the middle-ground
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Shared
Socioeconomic Pathway projections to 2050, which assume
continued income convergence, the paper finds that the
increase in food demand (102 percent) would be roughly a
third greater than without convergence (78 percent). Since
the impact of convergence on the supply side is much more
muted, convergence puts upward pressure on world food
prices, partially offsetting a baseline trend toward falling
world food prices to 2050. |
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