世界食料需給の現状・見通しと国際農業協力

抄録

This paper is summarized as follows. (1) Though population with malnutrition has decreased in the world lately, absolute malnutrition in Sub Sahara Africa has rather increased. In the region food and nutrition is likely to be shortage, a state of starvation is easily emerging, due to natural disaster and one caused by human being. (2) Scale of food demand is determined by increase of population and income per capita in the long run. In the future, it should be supposed that demand for such higher added products as animal products, horticultural crops and vegetable oils will increase. (3) Scale of food production is determined mainly by farmland and production per hectare. In the future, food production will be brought with increase of production per hectare. Coping with the change of food demand structure, production of animal products, horticultural crops and oilseeds will increase. Basically speaking, it should be noted that production of cereals is needed to increase consistently. (4) In the perspective of expansion of food trade globally in the future, food import will more increase in the developing countries and developing countries will get into net importer of food. In terms of imported food contents, import of oilseed, wheat, rice and coarse grains will increase significantly. (5) It is estimated that demand and supply of world food for next decade will show trend of slightly oversupply. However, in the developing countries shortage of cereals will make seriously due to increased number of livestock and consequently the rate of cereal self sufficiency will make lower. In particular, Sub Sahara Africa will face to serious food shortage with a view of difficulty of food import due to the constraint of foreign currency. (6) As desirable ways of international cooperation for agriculture towards the future, focusing on improvement of agricultural productivity for small farmer, four points as follows should be taken into consideration; ① strengthening linkage among research/development, extension and farmer, ② improving productive infrastructure on agriculture consistently, ③ building up institution and policies for small farmers and strengthening the farmer's group, ④ planning and implementing proper policies for agricultural and rural development.

In conclusion, in the future it is estimated that demand and supply of world food will get to slightly oversupply and international price of food will make lower substantially. In the developing countries, food will be likely to get into shortage generally and food shortage will be filled up with import and aid. In order to increase food production, important points should be put on development and extension of agricultural technology, improvement on agricultural infrastructure and institution and capacity building of human resources, focusing on small farmers as principal food producer. Finally, it is considered that capacity enhancement of small farmer in the developing countries is key point on increase and stabilization of world food, poverty reduction and environmental conservation.