Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
0 2,000 4,000 6,000
Kilometers
Agriculture as % of GDP
No data
0-10
11-20
21-30
31-40
41-50
51-60
FIGURE 4.2
Value added agriculture as a percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for all countries,
average of 2000-10 data (source: data from the World Bank).
analysis of food security, countries with a high proportion of their economy in the agriculture
sector are far more vulnerable to climate variability than others with many more diversified
sources of income with which to purchase food. They are also far less developed.
If we compare the percent of GDP in agriculture with a metric that describes the purchas-
ing power that a country has in comparison with all other countries, we see a non-linear
relationship between income and percent of the economy in agriculture. The gross national
income (GNI) is converted into an “international dollar” that has the same value in all places
in the year in question (here, 2010). The GNI is the sum of value added by all resident pro-
ducers plus all net income from abroad (
Figure 4.3
). Once national income is above around
1,000 international dollars per person, the proportion of the economy in the agriculture
sector is usually below 10 percent. GNI is also a useful measure to estimate how challenging
a country will find importing food from other regions during times of crisis. The GNI metric
describes the relationship between development of the broader economy and purchasing
power.
Changes in agricultural capacity in the regions that are most vulnerable to climate variabil-
ity are a serious threat to food security. Very few developing regions were adequately invest-
ing in cereal productive capacity in the 1990s and 2000s due to low commodity prices
(IAASTD 2008). The use of improved seeds and fertilizer for cereal production is declining
per person in the countries with expanding populations and highly agricultural economies,
such as Ethiopia and Tanzania (Funk and Brown, 2009). Since populations have expanded
significantly during this period, it has resulted in a reduction in per capita food production
during a time when the cost of food has increased.
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