The Impact of Population Growth on Food Security
The Global Food Crisis
Africa is the only continent on earth that does not grow enough food to feed all of its people, and 30 percent of people on the continent suffer from chronic hunger. This is unjust given that within its shores, Africa holds 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land.
In China, it’s been estimated that the potential long-term benefit in adopting conservation agriculture would be around $408 million for wheat alone. It’s a similar story in India, where the introduction of the zero-till drill, an Australian invention from the Australian Centre of International Agricultural Research, has proven successful. It’s now known in India as “the Happy Seeder,” having boosted average per capita incomes by 0.5 percent for those farmers using the technology.
Uneven Growth and Resource Constraints
The growth rate varies considerably across countries. Those countries whose populations continue to increase rapidly are precisely those that currently exhibit high levels of undernourishment. Many of these are in sub-Saharan Africa, which is expected to account for around 20 percent of the world’s population by 2050. Spare land is often not readily accessible due to a lack of infrastructure; it may be distant from markets or characterized by a high incidence of disease. Such factors can make production uneconomical.
Globally, land under crops is projected to increase by some 70 million ha by 2050. As much of the spare land is concentrated in a small number of countries, constraints may be very pronounced in other countries and regions. Where these constraints are coupled with fast population growth and inadequate income opportunities, land scarcity can lead to more poverty and migration. Thus, local resource scarcities are likely to remain a significant constraint in the quest for achieving food security for all.
Water Scarcity
Water is another critical resource, and irrigation has played a strong role in contributing to past yield and production growth. The world area equipped for irrigation has doubled since the 1960s to 300 million ha, but the potential for further expansion is limited. While water resources are globally abundant, they are extremely scarce in the Near East and North Africa, and in northern China, where they are most needed.
Factors Contributing to the Food Crisis
The factors leading to increased prices and the resultant food crisis are diverse and complex. Most factors, however, can be thought of as having impacts on the supply of food and/or the demand for food.
Supply Factors
- Land and water constraints
- Underinvestment in rural infrastructure and agriculture
- Lack of access to fertilizer and irrigation
- Trade policies
- Weather disruptions
Demand Factors
- Rising energy prices
- Conversion of croplands to biofuel production
- Population growth
- Globalization of food markets
- Changing diets
The current food crisis is, in the simplest terms, a result of rapid growth in food demand in conjunction with a decline in the growth of food supply.
The Role of Population Growth
A number of recent reports have implicated population growth as one of the main contributors to increasing food demand. There has not, however, been a comprehensive examination of how population factors (size, growth, distribution, and composition) may affect both the supply and demand for staple food. This article explored select aspects of the population-food crisis relationship, including several that are not typically discussed, and provided examples from East Africa, which has been particularly hard-hit by the food crisis.
The Impact of HIV/AIDS
The spread of HIV/AIDS is also undermining food security in sub-Saharan Africa, including the East African countries of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. HIV/AIDS reduces agriculture production through several factors, creating both immediate and cumulative impacts.
- Loss of Labor: HIV/AIDS affects people in their prime working ages, 15 to 49. In Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, more than 5 percent of the working-age population is infected. Subsistence agriculture relies heavily on human labor, particularly women’s labor. Therefore, in regions with high HIV/AIDS prevalence like southern Africa, where subsistence agriculture is the norm, HIV/AIDS-related illness and deaths reduce the agricultural labor force, resulting in less land being farmed, reduced yields, and less intensive crops being grown.
- Shift in Crop Production: In Kenya, a study found that the death of an adult female household member resulted in fewer grain crops grown, while the death of an adult male resulted in decreased production of cash crops such as sugar and coffee.
- Reduced Income and Investment: Household income may fall if the infected individual was a wage earner, and expenses may increase because of new health care costs. The redistribution of money for medicine and funeral expenses by afflicted households reduces the income available for food and investments to improve agricultural production.
- Loss of Knowledge: Food production is also threatened by the loss of agricultural knowledge when infected individuals die.
- Increased Vulnerability: The food crisis is also likely to exacerbate the impact of HIV/AIDS as infected individuals, who have heightened nutritional needs, find it more difficult to purchase foods.
Population Factors and Food Security
Several population factors play an important role in the increasing and changing nature of the demand for food, while also constricting supply and access to food. Population’s role is often neither direct nor simple, and its impacts can vary at the local and global levels. Nonetheless, many demographic trends that affect food supply and demand, especially rapid population growth, urbanization, population density of the rural poor, and migration for employment, are projected to continue. In the absence of significant policy reforms and technological change, these demographic factors will likely continue to affect food security in coming decades. East Africa, in particular, is likely to face many population-related food security challenges. Policies aimed at the current food crisis or at achieving the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal on hunger—by 2015, to reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger—must not ignore the complex role of population.
The Role of International Trade and Agriculture
Agriculture remains the largest employment sector in most developing countries, and international agriculture agreements are crucial to a country’s food security. Some critics argue that trade liberalization may reduce a country’s food security by reducing agricultural employment levels. Concern about this has led a group of World Trade Organization (WTO) member states to recommend that current negotiations on agricultural agreements allow developing countries to re-evaluate and raise tariffs on key products to protect national food security and employment. They argue that WTO agreements, by pushing for the liberalization of crucial markets, are threatening the food security of whole communities.
Addressing Food Insecurity
Food security will remain a challenge at local, household, and individual levels, and some countries will need to increase effective food demand more quickly than in the past through broad-based economic growth if they are to achieve it. Such countries are typically those characterized by persistent poverty and high population growth.
However, food aid without simultaneous developments in local agriculture sectors does not provide a sustainable solution to food insecurity. Increasing agricultural productivity in developing countries, for example, through developing drought-resistant crops and soils, will be a key factor in meeting food demands.
The Importance of Family Planning
Projections from the International Food Policy and Research Institute (IFPRI) suggest that slower population growth could significantly lower malnutrition along with increased agricultural productivity, economic growth, and investment in health and education. Because population trends will continue to affect the demand for food for decades to come, it is important that demographic projections be incorporated into plans to improve agricultural production and achieve greater food security. It is possible to improve food security by increasing access to contraception while providing opportunities for women to be community leaders and stewards of fishery resources. An estimated 215 million women in the developing world want to avoid pregnancy but lack modern contraception. Investments in international family planning and reproductive health can improve families’ well-being at the household level while helping to slow population growth in areas most affected by food insecurity.
The Urgent Need for Population Stabilization
If we don’t stabilize population growth, life as we know it is unlikely to continue. With so many of us burning fossil fuels, gobbling up renewable resources, and generating toxic trash, our life support ecosystems are threatened. Unprecedented economic growth has been accompanied by an equally unprecedented increase in the world population. During the 1800s and 1900s, up to half of world economic growth was likely due to population growth. Georgetown University environmental historian John McNeill explains: “A big part of economic growth to date consists of population growth.” Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure of economic success or failure, is the number of people multiplied by per capita income. Slow population growth, and economic growth will likely slow as well unless advances in productivity and spending increase at rates high enough to make up the difference. This perhaps explains why population policy is not a popular issue.