Elsevier

Global Food Security

Volume 11, December 2016, Pages 17-25
Global Food Security

Oil crops, aquaculture, and the rising role of demand: A fresh perspective on food security

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2016.05.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Income growth and disparity are altering food demand and commodity systems.

  • Aquaculture, palm oil and soy production have risen by 5–7% annually since 1990.

  • The major oil crops are not produced mainly by the poor for the poor.

  • Aquaculture systems are diverse and have mixed nutritional outcomes for the poor.

  • Enhancing food security in these systems requires new analytical frameworks.

Abstract

The global economy has experienced remarkable growth during the past twenty-five years. Rising incomes have helped to alleviate extreme poverty and calorie deficiencies worldwide, and have fueled demand for animal protein and processed foods. Income disparities have also widened, leaving the majority of the world's population in the lower income groups. This paper explores how economic growth, income distribution, and trade have influenced patterns of food demand and food security since 1990. It focuses on two of the most rapidly expanding segments of the world food economy, tropical oil crops and aquaculture. These commodity groups involve multinational companies and smallholder producers oriented mainly around global markets. To date, however, Sub-Saharan Africa has largely been by-passed by growth in both sectors.

Introduction

Twenty-five years ago, when I entered the food security field, much of the research and policy advising in the area was focused on meeting basic calorie needs of the poor through rural development and staple crop improvements. A great deal of attention at the time was centered on the Green Revolution and its roles in raising grain yields, boosting rural employment and incomes, and maintaining affordable cereal prices for low-income consumers. From a development perspective, the strategy was aimed at expanding food availability and access via sound micro- and macro- policies at the national scale—thus stimulating growth in food production “by the poor, for the poor.” The broader goals of this strategy, especially for large agrarian societies, were to reduce chronic hunger, increase labor productivity, and generate an agricultural surplus that could fuel economy-wide growth.

While the objective of meeting basic calorie needs persists in the world's poorest countries, the work of food security analysts has broadened substantially in recent decades to encompass developmental, nutritional, and environmental dimensions of food systems in a more urbanized and globalized world. The landscape of hunger and malnutrition looks different today than it did a generation ago. Obesity rates have surpassed rates of hunger (as defined by energy deficits) in many countries, including those in the developing world (SOFI, 2012; Sahn, 2015). Chronic micronutrient deficiencies (“hidden hunger”) have been identified as major impediments to physical and cognitive development in many low-income communities, limiting their educational, health, and economic potential (SOFI, 2012; Rozelle et al., 2014). This emerging “triple burden” of malnutrition—energy deficits, hidden hunger, and obesity—has coincided with a trend toward reduced diversity of foods consumed globally (Khoury et al., 2014). Underpinning these trends are large sunk investments in agricultural R&D for the major commodities and vested political interests in supporting farmers and industries along the supply chains for dominant grain and oil crops in key producing countries. The history surrounding agricultural policies, many of which grew out of a genuine effort to improve food security at one point in time, has had a certain deterministic effect on current agricultural practices and social outcomes (Naylor, 2014a, Pingali, 2015).

Meanwhile, two very different segments of the world food economy—aquaculture and oil crops (e.g., palm oil and soybean)—have experienced extraordinary growth during the past 25 years, especially in relation to cereal crops (Fig. 1). This paper focuses on tropical oil crops and aquaculture systems in the developing world, as both present new opportunities and challenges for food security analysts and policymakers. Both sectors are growing quickly in response to rising per capita incomes and global demands for animal protein and processed foods, but with mixed nutritional consequences. Both pose significant risks to the environment depending on the production system and the set of management practices in question. Paradoxically, each sector also offers unusual promise for improving environmental outcomes from intensive food production. It is no surprise that these two commodity systems are attracting heightened attention from development specialists, the environmental community, consumer groups, and the multinational agribusiness sector.

In contrast to the supply-side orientation of much of the Green Revolution literature, I begin by describing the important demand-side dynamics within the world food economy that have set the stage for the emergence of tropical oil crops and aquaculture as major commodity systems. I then turn to the role that these systems play in global food security. In some cases, oil crops and aquaculture fit the earlier model of food produced “by the poor, for the poor”, with harvested output serving as a staple source of calories, fats, and protein for the producing region. In other cases, these sectors follow entirely different paths of food produced “by the poor, for the rich” or “by the rich for the rich”. In the latter cases, food security outcomes depend mainly on indirect benefits and costs of commodity expansion associated with employment and income growth, land rights, and macroeconomic management (e.g., trade, tax, and foreign exchange policies).

Section snippets

The rising role of demand

One of the most dramatic changes in the world food economy during the past 25 years is the rising role of demand-based factors in determining patterns of trade and prices. Major demographic and economic transitions have shaped, and will continue to shape, global food systems. Two billion people have been added to the planet—over 90% in the developing world—and over half of the global population now lives in cities. Although Asia has the largest total population (4.4 billion or ~60% of the world

Shifting diets and emerging commodity systems

In what ways have these demographic and income changes affected global diets, food systems, and food and nutrition security? Two of the most important consequences are that basic calorie needs have now been met in most societies, and that per capita consumption of staple food grains and starches is declining on average throughout much of the developing world (Pingali, 2015). Meanwhile, the demand for high-income-elasticity commodities, such as animal products (meat, fish) and their associated

Tropical oil crops

The oil crops sector has expanded at a remarkable pace during the past 25 years, exceeding growth in cereal production by a wide margin (Fig. 1). The impressive rate of development of this sector, and its pronounced geographic expansion in the tropics, has given rise to its branding as “the tropical oil crops revolution”—on par in scale, but not in character, with the Green Revolution. There are several elements of the tropical oil crop revolution that influence global food security outcomes,

Aquaculture

Aquaculture is the fastest growing segment of the world food economy, surpassing rates of increase in terrestrial livestock and dairy production by a wide margin (Fig. 1). Aquaculture currently accounts for over half of the fish and shellfish consumed directly as food worldwide (Fig. 4), and it is expected to supply up to two-thirds of global (food) fish demand by 2030 (World Bank, 2013). The meteoric rise of this sector during the past 25 years is attributed to three key factors: income growth

Conclusions

During the past 25 years, there has been a noticeable shift in focus within the food security field, from one centered primarily on crop production and food supplies to one with much greater emphasis on demand. The focus has also swung from calorie deficiencies toward diet diversity and nutrition. Demographic changes and income growth play important roles in demand dynamics and set the stage for the development of new commodity systems and global supply chains. Yet it is the patterns of income

Acknowledgements

The author extends special thanks to Walter Falcon, Derek Byerlee, Ling Cao, Matthew Higgins and two anonymous reviewers for their substantive contributions to the manuscript. There were no external funding sources for this review. The tropical oil crops section draws on a volume that I have recently co-authored with Derek Byerlee and Walter Falcon on The Tropical Oil Crops Revolution: Food, Feed, Fuel, and Forests (Oxford University Press, in press, 2016), with further acknowledgements and

References (45)

  • C. Béné et al.

    Contribution of fisheries and aquaculture to food security and poverty reduction: assessing the current evidence

    World Dev.

    (2016)
  • A. Chiu et al.

    Feed and fishmeal use in the production of carp and tilapia in China

    Aquaculture

    (2013)
  • C.B. Barrett et al.

    The micronutrient deficiencies challenge in African food systems

  • M.C.M. Beveridge et al.

    Meeting the food and nutrition needs of the poor: the role of fish and the opportunities and challenges emerging from the rise of aquaculture

    J. Fish Biol.

    (2013)
  • D. Byerlee et al.

    The Tropical Oil Crops Revolution: Food, Feed, Fuel, and Forests

    (2016)
  • L. Cao et al.

    China's aquaculture and the world’s wild fisheries

    Science

    (2015)
  • CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 2015. Distribution of Family Income – Gini Index. Central Intelligence Agency World...
  • K.M. E-Jahan et al.

    The impacts of aquaculture development on food security: lessons from Bangladesh

    Aquac. Res.

    (2010)
  • FAO

    The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture: Opportunities and Challenges

    (2014)
  • FAO, 2015. United Nations FAO Food Outlook. 〈http://www.fao.org/giews/English/fo/index.htm〉 (accessed...
  • FishStatJ, 2016, Database and Software for Fishery Statistical Analysis. United Nations FAO....
  • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), n.d. Statistical database of the United Nations Food and...
  • HDR

    Human Development Report 2015: Work for Human Development

    (2015)
  • IMF, 2015a. World Economic Outlook Database. International Monetary Fund....
  • IMF, 2015b. International Financial Statistics. 〈http://www.imf.org/external/data.htm〉 (accessed...
  • C.K. Khoury et al.

    Increasing homogeneity in global food supplies and the implications for food security

    Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA

    (2014)
  • D. Klinger et al.

    Searching for solutions in aquaculture: charting a sustainable course

    Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour.

    (2012)
  • Kochhar, R., 2015. A Global Middle Class is More Promise than Reality: From 2001 to 2011, Nearly out of Poverty, but...
  • S. Kuznets

    Economic growth and income inequality

    Am. Econ. Rev.

    (1955)
  • MDG (Millennium Development Goals), 2015. The Millennium Development Goals Report. United Nations, New...
  • R.L. Naylor

    From politics to farm plots: a field perspective on food security

  • Cited by (0)

    1

    William Wrigley Professor of Earth System Science, and Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, Stanford University, Encina Hall East 406, Stanford, 94305-6055 CA, United States.

    View full text