Political economy, food and population projections

Is able the Earth of to double the food production in the coming years?
That is the key question that some politicians, researchers and people linked to the agriculture have made themselves in the last months; the reason? An announcement made by the FAO food chief, Jacques Diouf on January 26 2009 during an international conference on food security in Madrid.
Jacques Diouf said that “…We face the challenge now of not only ensuring food for the 973 million who are currently hungry, but also ensuring there is food for nine billion people in 2050. We will need to double global food production by 2050…”
According with The Guardian of London in information of the journalist Juliette Jowit on April 19 2010, the Soil Association of the United Kingdom published a study with the title “The big fat lie about doubling food production,” where criticize the projection and assure that their origin is a FAO report of June 2006 entitled World Agriculture towards 2030/2050.
The Guardian informs that the Soil Association assures that “…The forecast increase needed in production would be closer to 70% by 2050…” and that “…The UK government has said that the difference between 100% and 70% is not trivial because it is more than the food production of the whole American continent…”
Nobody can predict the future with precision
I would like to comment an anecdote that I lived many years ago. In that time I was director of an area in the planning office of my country and helped a student to get a grant to study in one of the most advanced North Americans universities. I advised him to pay special attention to the planning subjects. One year after he came back and said to me: the studies have been excellent but I want to tell you something that perhaps will be disappointing. And he told me that one of his professors, a Nobel Laureate, said to him and to the rest of the pupils that the planning is possible only at short term, because the world change everyday to an unbelievable speed and for that reason is not possible to make plans at long term.
I did not forget the concept. In the following years I felt a great attraction by the philosophy and I could understand better what the professor wanted to express to his pupils. Indeed, the changes, sometimes radical and unexpected changes, are the essence of the live and they affect the possibilities of forecast at long term. It is true that there is a statistic reality, trends that we can to verify in the facts, but they are only tendencies that can change in any moment. I will give only one example in the following question:
Who could predict twenty years ago that twenty years after a young leader like Barack Obama would be the president of the United States?
The projections
The studies of the international agencies sometimes present contradictory information. The reason is, perhaps, that that information is gathered and interpreted by different people with different visions of a same phenomenon.
Observe you the three following paragraphs of the FAO document World Agriculture towards 2015/2030; the quotes belong to the Executive Summary:
“…There are three main sources of growth in crop production: expanding the land area, increasing the frequencies with which it is cropped (often through irrigation), and boosting yields. It has suggested that we may be approaching the ceiling of what is possible for all three sources…”
But in the same section says the following:
“…At global level there is adequate unused potential farmland. A comparison of soils, terrains and climates which the needs of major crops suggest that an extra 2.8 billion ha are suitable in varying degrees for the rain fed production on arable and permanent crops. This is almost twice as much as currently farmed. However, only a fraction of this extra land is realistically available for agricultural expansion in the foreseeable future, as much as needed to preserve forest cover and to support infrastructural development…”
And after it assure:
“…More than half the land that could be opened up is in just seven countries of tropical Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, whereas other regions and countries face a shortage of suitable land. In the Near East and North Africa, 87 percent of suitable land was already being farmed in 1977-99 while in South Asia the figure is no less than 94 per cent. In these regions, intensification through improved management and technologies will be the main, indeed virtually the only source of production growth. In many places land degradation threatens the productivity of existing farmland and pasture…” End of the quotes.
It is evident the contradiction between the first and third paragraphs and the second one.
Then the question is:
Is there or not enough water and expanding area for agricultural production?
The agricultural lands of Europe, Asia and part of Africa have been exploited by thousands of years and most of them are already exhausted; Egypt, for example, where the historians consider that the agriculture began. The lands of America have been also exploited but in less intensity and proportion; hence some of them are still a potential reserve.
The problem is that the agricultural exploitation means deforestation and a great damage to the environment. For example, since the sixty years of the 20th century ---before the region was closed for strangers--- the Amazon region has been destroyed, mainly, by the farmers, the lumberjacks and the miners. The great problem is that the Amazon area is vital for the environment sustainability of the planet. That is the last ecological reserve that survives in the world.
As a result of the expressed the other key question is:
Which are the tropical Latin American and Sub-Saharan seven countries that the FAO consider could be open to new developments in the agriculture?
How that development will affect the environment and the global sustainability?
Restricted possibilities
If you consider the reality of the planet presented by the own FAO, you will confirm that there are restricted possibilities of the agricultural expansion. The limitation in matter of land and water are a true. The FAO’s experts know and cope that true better than the rest of the world citizens but, perhaps, they can not recognize it publicly; notwithstanding, sometimes, in official papers as the quoted in the previous paragraphs, they do clear mention of that reality.
Why to hide the perspectives?
Everybody wait miracles in all the issues of the live. You expect your miracles I, the governments and the rest of the people too. Everybody wait a change, a good change. The hope of miracles feed the live of the people. Hence nobody want to see negative perspectives and anticipate measures for tackle them. Perhaps that would be an answer.
But to hide or to not recognize the true does not change the true. The governments and the international official agencies have the duty of to warn about the perspectives and to make the recommendations for a best future.
What is the most important?
The question that head this work is the most important:
Is able the Earth of to double the food production in the coming years?
The answer is in the hands of the scientists, the politicians, economists and the people linked to the agriculture: farmers and entrepreneurs, among others.
The true is that the world will need to increase the food production in an important amount to attend the growth population of the coming years. In this moment it does not matter if is 100 percent or 70 percent; the true is that any of them is an enormous quantity.
The perspectives of the world population are the base for the food estimations.

The FAO consider that the world population will reach the peak of 9 billion of inhabitants for the year 2050 and estimates that since that moment will not have growth at global level. In the Overview ---page 3--- of the World Agriculture towards 2030/2050, they explain the forecast of zero population growth for the year 2050 as “…the net result of continuing increases in some countries compensated by declines in others…”
But they assure after that “…zero population growth at global level will not automatically translate into zero growth in demand and cessation of building-up pressures on resources and the wider environment…”
Conclusion
The great problem is how to arrive to the year 2050; how to produce the food that the population will require, in a scenario of water shortage worldwide, overexploitation of the land and growing contamination.
First of all it is necessary to recognize and to say the true at the world.
It is necessary an integral effort of many sectors, among them, the science, the technology, the political economy, the demography, the politicians, the farmers and the entrepreneurs, for giving answers to those issues. The demographers have an especial responsibility. They must be listened by the political leaders and other researchers.
Which is your opinion?