The Environmental Food Crisis

nomic growth is projected to slow to around 4% and be in the 6% range for developing countries beyond 2008 (IFPRI, 2008). An increasing share of global agricultural exports originates from developed countries. It increased from 32% in 2000 to 37% in 2006, but there are large regional variations. For in- stance, Africa’s share in global exports only increased from 2.3 to 2.8% in this period (UNCTAD, 2007). The EU countries ac- count for most of the global growth; their share of total agricul- tural exports has increased from slightly more than 20% in the early 1960s to more than 40% today. A large portion of this increase is accounted for by intra-EU trade, which represents around 30% of world agricultural trade. Conversely, during the past four decades, developing countries have seen their share of world agricultural exports decline from almost 40% to around 25% in the early 1990s before rebound- ing to about 30% today. This contrasts with the steadily increas- ing share of developing countries in total merchandise exports. Over this same period, the share of global agricultural imports purchased by developing countries increased from less than 20% to about 30% (FAO, 2005).

Another perspective of this trade is the purchase of land abroad for food production. Responding to recent food crises, a num- ber of countries have started to purchase land abroad for cul- tivation of crops needed to support domestic demand (Figure 30). This is seen as a long-term solution to the high prices of ag- riculture commodities and increasing demand for agroforestry products such as palm oil. Among the most active countries owning, leasing or concessioning farmland overseas are China, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and United Arab Emir- ates; a number of other countries are only starting negotiations for the coming years. The total area of overseas farmland in different countries was estimated at 5.7 million ha at the end of 2008 or 0.4% of the global cropland area. Another option for meeting food demand is to ensure produc- tion in the country or region itself, by aiming at self-sufficiency and lowering the dependency on other regions. Current es- timates of the developments on the demand side require in- crease in production in those regions with the highest econom- ic growth or population increase (see Chapter 2). The majority of these regions will be in emerging economies in Africa and INCREASING FOOD PRODUCTION

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