Global Food Production

In LEDCs, the opposite is true and in some countries over half of their population is suffering from under-nutrition. The reasons for food shortages are population increases, increasing wealth and more extremes of weather.

Every year, the population of the world increases. MEDCs are able to import more food from LEDCs. The LEDCs turn more land over to commercial farming for export which leaves less land for subsistence farming. As populations of emerging economies become generally wealthier, they demand more meat and dairy produce. More land is used for rearing animals and some of the food e.g. grains like wheat and barley that could be grown for humans is given to the farmed animals so less reaches the market. The production of a single kilogram of meat takes around five kilograms of grain. More extreme weather means that crops can be unexpectedly lost owing to drought, heavy rain or high winds.

There are two contrasting views about global resource shortages like food. The first one is rather negative and was suggested by Thomas Malthus in the 18^th century, well before globalisation or the idea of the welfare state had become established. He believed that as the population grew faster than food could be grown, the population growth would be kept in check and even reduced by starvation and wars for control over food and other resources. He called this a positive check. He also supposed that people might try to slow the population growth by having smaller families and gave this a name too, he called it a preventative check.

The more positive view came in the 1960s when globalisation was well under way. Esther Boserup wrote that people will find ways around the food shortages by inventing new ways of growing crops and animals. We do in fact see this in operation today with genetic modification and selective breeding being used to increase the yields of crops and to make them more resistant to pests and drought.