From food insufficiency towards trade dependency: a historical analysis of global food availability

Abstract

Achieving global food security is one of the major challenges of the coming decades. In order to tackle future food security challenges we must understand the past. This study presents a historical analysis of global food availability, one of the key elements of food security. By calculating national level dietary energy supply and production for nine time steps during 1965-2005 we classify countries based on their food availability, food self-sufficiency and food trade. We also look at how diets have changed during this period with regard to supply of animal based calories. Our results show that food availability has increased substantially both in absolute and relative terms. The percentage of population living in countries with sufficient food supply (>2500 kcal/cap/d) has almost doubled from 33% in 1965 to 61% in 2005. The population living with critically low food supply (<2000 kcal/cap/d) has dropped from 52% to 3%. Largest improvements are seen in the MENA region, Latin America, China and Southeast Asia. Besides, the composition of diets has changed considerably within the study period: the world population living with high supply of animal source food (>15% of dietary energy supply) increased from 33% to over 50%. While food supply has increased globally, food self-sufficiency (domestic production>2500 kcal/cap/d) has not changed remarkably. In the beginning of the study period insufficient domestic production meant insufficient food supply, but in recent years the deficit has been increasingly compensated by rising food imports. This highlights the growing importance of food trade, either for food supply in importing countries or as a source of income for exporters. Our results provide a basis for understanding past global food system dynamics which, in turn, can benefit research on future food security.

Figure 1. Classification of food availability (A), food self-sufficiency (B) and food trade (C).

MDER and ADER refer to minimum dietary energy requirement and average dietary energy requirement, respectively (see Methods section and the FAO [33]).

Figure 2. Global population in different food availability (A), food self-sufficiency (B) and food trade (C) categories.

Upper figures express the population in absolute numbers and lower figures in relative numbers. DES and DEP refer to dietary energy supply and dietary energy production.

Figure 3. Food availability (A), food self-sufficiency (B) and food trade (C) mapped for five time steps.

DES and DEP refer to dietary energy supply and dietary energy production.

Figure 4. Share of global population living in different food availability (x-axis; measured with DES – dietary energy supply) and food self-sufficiency (y-axis; measured with DEP – dietary energy production) categories during the study period.

Bar charts in the end of rows and columns illustrate the sum of each row/column.

Figure 5. Global population living in different categories based on supply of animal based calories.

Upper figure expresses the population in absolute numbers and lower figure in relative numbers.

Figure 6. Results of correlation analyses mapped.

A: GDP (gross domestic product) and DES (dietary energy supply); B: GDP and supply of animal based calories; C: freshwater availability and DEP (dietary energy production); D: freshwater availability and net food exports; E: arable land and DEP and F: arable land and net food exports. See Table 1 for tabulated population results.

Figure 7. Trends in dietary energy supply (DES) and prevalence of food inadequacy in different food security classes during 1990–2005.

As food inadequacy data for 1990 were not available, data for 1991 were used here instead. Note: The FAO does not report prevalence of food inadequacy numbers that are under 5%, thus the actual numbers in the high supply category are likely to be even lower.