WASHINGTON: Third World countries will need nearly a third more food from abroad by the year 2000, and where they will find the money to buy it is in doubt, according to a study by the International Food Policy Research Institute.
The institute said the poor countries will need 70 million metric tons of food from the United States and other big producers in 15 years, a third more than their requirement in 1980.
“A major concern is the ability of the poorest countries to pay the Costs of projected food imports,” Wrote Leonardo A, Paulino, who is responsible for the projection by the institute, which is supported by the United States and other public and private sources.
He said that as international pressure to alleviate poverty and hunger in the Third World increases, much food exported from developed to developing nations would be in the form of aid. “But”, he said, “The bigger portion will still be through commercial trade”. International food aid from all sources now totals about 12 million tons a year.
The predictions could mean in teased exports for American farmers, who have lost markets to European and other competitor in recent years.
Paulino is most concerned about the situation in 19 countries: Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Nepal in Asia; Haiti in the Caribbean; and in Africa, Kenya, Mozambique, Senegal, Madagascar, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauretania, Niger and Somalia.
He said that in at least half these Countries the average citizen earned less than $250.00 in 1980, after incomes grew by less than 1 percent year in the 1960s and 1970s People were getting less than 90 Percent of the calories that internal organizations consider a requirement.
If past trends continue, he calculates that the 19 will have a shortfall of nearly 31 million tons in 2000.
The United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina and Western Europe are the big suppliers of food. Paulino sees another modest food exporter on the horizon: China if it holds down its population as much as the Communist government plans.
China already had net exports of more than two million tons in 1985, according to the Chinese embassy in Washington.
Not only China but countries in South, east and Southeast Asia have improved their food situation including India, Bangladesh and South Korea, Asia had a net deficit of 18.9 million tons in 1980. By the year 2000 Paulino expects to see it in surplus by 51.4 million,
He foresees the biggest food deficit, 36 million tons, in western Africa. He says the shortage there can grow by as much as 10 percent 1 year because food production is rising so slowly and population is rising so fast. Some of the countries in the area have been hard hit by drought.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 1, 1986
