This year's world grain har tonnesvest will increase to a record level but will still fall nearly 60 million tonnes short of what 6.4 billion people and more than 1 billion livestock will consume, an environmental group predicted Tuesday.
The group and a University of Missouri agricultural economist who agreed the estimate was "in the ballpark" cited usual problems with weather, crop diseases and insects, new worries from falling water tables, especially in the US and China, and rising temperatures worldwide.
The 2004 harvest is estimated at 1.89 billion tonnes, the most ever, but consumption is projected at 1.95 billion tonnes, said Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, an environmental research group.
"This is good news for farmers and bad news for consumers," Brown said. "As grain prices go up, farmers benefit but consumers suffer. Those for whom it will be especially difficult are the 3 billion people who live on US$2 or less a day."
It also would mark a fifth straight year of grain harvest shortfalls -- and draw down world stocks to below 300 million tonnes, Brown said. Such a supply, the lowest level ever, probably would last less than 56 days, he said.
In 2003, the 1.83 billion tonnes of world grain production fell short of the 1.94 million tonnes consumed, according to the US Agriculture Department's latest statistics, in April.
That meant about 59 days world supply. The lowest ever was 56 days in 1972, when wheat and rice prices doubled because of scarcity after poor grain harvests, according to Brown.
Restoring world grain stocks to about 70 days worth, a minimal level for global food security, would require boosting 2004 production by at least another 55 million tonnes after making up the shortfall, Brown said.
Brown said US consumers already coping with stagnating wages and rising gasoline prices could be squeezed further by higher food prices. "We are looking at substantial rises in grain and food prices as early as this fall," he said.
In each of the last two years, record or near-record heat waves have taken the edge off the world grain harvest, Brown said. In 2003, Europe bore the brunt of the rising temperatures as an August heat wave shrunk grain harvests from France eastward through Ukraine. In 2002, intense heat reduced the harvests in India and the US.
"The environmental trends are beginning to kick in, and that includes soil erosion and desertification," Brown said. "Both of them make it much more difficult for farmers to continue expanding production at a rapid pace."
Pat Westhoff, who helps direct the university-sponsored Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute in Columbia, Mo., which is mostly funded by Congress through USDA, said he generally agreed with Brown's estimates and overall assessment.
RSS