Landscapes Lost and Found - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 4

to the Green Revolution in developing countries. Since then, total world
food production grew by 145 per cent. In Africa, it is up by 140 per cent,
in Latin America by almost 200 per cent, and in Asia by a remarkable 280
per cent. The greatest increases have been in China - an extraordinary
fivefold increase, mostly occurring in the 1980s and 1990s. In the
industrialized regions, production started from a higher base. Yet in the
US, it still doubled over 40 years, and in western Europe grew by 68 per
cent. 1
Over the same period, world population has grown from 3 to 6 billion. 2
Again, per capita agricultural production has outpaced population growth.
For each person today, there is an extra 25 per cent of food compared with
people in 1961. These aggregate figures, though, hide important differ-
ences between regions. In Asia and Latin America, per capita food
production has stayed ahead, increasing by 76 and 28 per cent respectively.
Africa, however, has fared badly, with food production per person 10 per
cent less today than in 1961. China, again, performs best, with a trebling
of food production per person over the same period. Industrialized
countries as a whole show similar patterns: roughly a 40 per cent increase
in food production per person.
Yet, these advances in aggregate productivity have only brought limited
reductions in incidence of hunger. At the turn of the 21st century, there
were nearly 800 million people who were hungry and who lacked adequate
access to food, an astonishing 18 per cent of all people in developing
countries. One third are in East and South-East Asia, another third in
South Asia, a quarter in sub-Saharan Africa, and one twentieth each in
Latin America and the Caribbean, and in North Africa and the Near East.
Nonetheless, there has been progress to celebrate. Incidences of under-
nourishment stood at 960 million in 1970, comprising one third of
people in developing countries at the time. Since then, average per capita
consumption of food has increased by 17 per cent to 2760 kilocalories
per day - good as an average, but still hiding a great many people surviving
on less (33 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, still have per capita
food consumption under 2200 kilocaleries per day). The challenge
remains huge. 3
There is also significant food poverty in industrialized countries. In
the US, the largest producer and exporter of food in the world, 11 million
people are food insecure and hungry, and a further 23 million are hovering
close to the edge of hunger - their food supply is uncertain but they are
not permanently hungry. Of these, 4 million children are hungry, and
another 10 million are hungry for at least one month each year. A further
sign that something is wrong is that one in seven people in industrialized
countries is now clinically obese, and that five of the ten leading causes