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While international agricultural commodity markets appear to have entered calmer conditions after record highs last year, food commodity prices are anticipated to remain on a higher plateau over the next decade, underpinned by firm demand but a slowing growth in global production, according to the latest OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook.
Based on their greater potential to increase land devoted to agriculture and to improve productivity,
developing countries will provide the main source of global production growth to 2021. Annual production growth in developing countries is projected to average 1.9% p.a. compared to 1.2% p.a. in developed countries. An additional 680 million people are expected to inhabit the planet by 2021 with the fastest population growth rates in Africa and India. Rising incomes and urbanisation will lead to changes in diets that shift consumption to more processed foods, fats and animal protein. This will favour higher value meats and dairy products, and drive the indirect demand for coarse grains and oilseeds for livestock feed.
Emerging economies will capture an increasing share of the expanding world trade in agriculture. Most prominent are countries like Brazil, China, Indonesia, Thailand, the Russian Federation and Ukraine that have made signifi cant investments to boost agricultural production capacity. By 2021, developing countries will account for the majority of exports of rice, oilseeds, vegetable and palm oil, protein meals, sugar, beef, poultry meat, fi sh and fi sh products.
Increased demand for meats will mostly stem from large economies in Asia, crude oil exporting countries and Latin America, where income gains are expected to be significant. Poultry meat will lead this anticipated growth as the cheapest and most accessible source of meat protein, overtaking pigmeat as the largest meat sector by the end of the outlook period.
Wednesday July 11, 2012/ FAO.
http://www.fao.org
