TRENDS IN NATIONAL FOOD SECURITY AND THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE - Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability - page 77

particularly heavily on expansion of cropped area are Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and
South America.
Figure 4.4 shows trends in harvested land area from the FAO statistics database from 1961
to 2010 for Africa, showing the expansion of cropped area in the four major coarse grains.
These crops are the least expensive, the most widely grown and most often consumed by the
poorest communities. Note the large increase in area planted for maize since 1961, and
increases in area planted for millet, sorghum and miscellaneous grains since the mid 1980s,
with a nearly doubling of the area under cultivation.
Given that many areas have increased production due to increases in yields, the balance
between production gains due to yields and those due to expansion in cropped area is
important for understanding how weather may affect production. Climate variability affects
yields, but if cropped area is sufficiently large and the surplus being produced is adequate,
minimum production should be achievable. Figure 4.5 shows the relationship between total
maize production and total harvested area in maize for four regions: Africa, Asia, Europe and
North America. Each of these regions has a different production-area relationship, but they
all show increases in production. Europe has increased production of maize from 200 million
tonnes per year to nearly 750 million tonnes, but farmers in Europe have hardly increased the
land in maize cultivation at all since 1961 (FAO, 2013). North America has seen an enormous

x10 6

4.5

Misc. cereals
Maize
Millet
Sorghum

4.0

3.5

3.0

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5

0

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985

Year

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

FIGURE 4.4 Trends in area harvested in maize, millet, sorghum and miscellaneous grains for the
Africa region from 1961 to 2010 (source: data from FAO statistics database).

Note
Here, the miscellaneous cereal crops category includes grains that are not identified separately because of
their minor relevance at the international level.