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PAGE 14
PASTOR GENERAL'$ REPORT, SEPTEMBER 16, 1986
Europe. In fact; even with the decline in African agriculture,
world per capita food output still increased by five percent
during the 1970s••..
Worldwide production of wheat and food grains, for example,
increased by 100 percent during the past two decades.... The
world grain surplus currently stands at a record high of over
190 million tons, or about 50 times the amount required to
cover the entire Sahelian grain shortfall for all of 1985•.••
The prospect of famine has been all but eliminated throughout
the world--except for Africa.
In fact, the world has moved into a time--at least for now--of
overproduction. But instead of this being good news, one hears of looming
trade conficts as nations struggle with each other in increasingly stiff
competitive battles to unload unwanted food surpluses--usually produced as
a result of government subsidies to farmers. In the Spring 1985 issue of
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, author Barbara Insel wrote, in an article entitled "A
World Awash in Grain":
What happened is that American agriculture--and that of many of
our friends and neighbors--has succeeded all too well••.• And,
like the United States, the world has also learned how to
protect its farmers by supporting grain prices artificially,
stimulating still higher levels of production.
As a
consequence, we have entered an era of permanent grain
surpluses, of a buyer's market for grain exports, where the
United States can no longer set the rules.
We now find
ourselves in a world awash in grain, with ever-increasing bills
for producing, maintaining and storing the unwanted product of
our labors.
How did we get here? Why is the world's new ability to feed
itself not an opportunity but � crisis? What does this mean
for the United States and its allies? One thing is certain:
agricultural policy will never again be only a domestic issue-
or only an agricultural issue.
To begin to understand the problem, let us see what has
happened to world agriculture over the last decade.••• [We see]
a picture of a growing number of exporters, a shrinking set of
food-importing nations and, despite repeated efforts to reduce
them, a growth of surplus stocks to nearly insupportable
levels••••
Some examples are striking.
In China, the introduction of
market incentives has produced a 15-percent expansion in corn
production, a 20-percent expansion in rice production and a 40-
percent expansion in wheat production just since 1982. Chinese
wheat production grew from 41 million metric tons in 1977 to 85
mmt in 1984--and yields doubled from 1.46 metric tons per
hectare to 2.90 tons•.••
The situation in Western Europe is equally instructive.
If
there were ever any doubt that agricultural production responds
.,.