Is Long-Term Food Insecurity Inevitable in Asia

This article questions two widely accepted claims on long-term food insecurity in Asia, the world's (heterogeneous) region with the largest number of undernourished individuals. The first claim is that food production may not grow as fast as the pace of population growth in Asia, which will rea...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Cuesta, Jose
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	Taylor and Francis 2014
Subjects:	food security agricultural production poverty middle class crises
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20532

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recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-205322021-04-23T14:03:56Z Is Long-Term Food Insecurity Inevitable in Asia Cuesta, Jose food security agricultural production poverty middle class crises This article questions two widely accepted claims on long-term food insecurity in Asia, the world's (heterogeneous) region with the largest number of undernourished individuals. The first claim is that food production may not grow as fast as the pace of population growth in Asia, which will reach 5 billion by 2050. The second claim is that an unstoppable emergence of a middle class in Asia will dramatically change the composition of food demand. On the first claim, the region's contribution to high and volatile international food prices is well known, but Asia's potentially positive contributions toward future price uncertainty and productivity growth are much less cited. On the second claim, the changing composition of future food demand in the region will depend on the extent that poverty reduction effectively leads to middle class expansion, which it is not an automatic process, and its extent still remains to be seen. Past evidence teaches us that poverty reduction on its own will not do the job of eradicating hunger, nor will only increasing food production. The jury is still out, but doomsday predictions are not necessarily justified. 2014-11-13T19:23:44Z 2014-11-13T19:23:44Z 2014-10-29 Journal Article The Pacific Review 0951-2748 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20532 en_US CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Taylor and Francis Publications & Research :: Journal Article East Asia and Pacific South Asia Asia
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	food security agricultural production poverty middle class crises
spellingShingle	food security agricultural production poverty middle class crises Cuesta, Jose Is Long-Term Food Insecurity Inevitable in Asia
geographic_facet	East Asia and Pacific South Asia Asia
description	This article questions two widely accepted claims on long-term food insecurity in Asia, the world's (heterogeneous) region with the largest number of undernourished individuals. The first claim is that food production may not grow as fast as the pace of population growth in Asia, which will reach 5 billion by 2050. The second claim is that an unstoppable emergence of a middle class in Asia will dramatically change the composition of food demand. On the first claim, the region's contribution to high and volatile international food prices is well known, but Asia's potentially positive contributions toward future price uncertainty and productivity growth are much less cited. On the second claim, the changing composition of future food demand in the region will depend on the extent that poverty reduction effectively leads to middle class expansion, which it is not an automatic process, and its extent still remains to be seen. Past evidence teaches us that poverty reduction on its own will not do the job of eradicating hunger, nor will only increasing food production. The jury is still out, but doomsday predictions are not necessarily justified.
format	Journal Article
author	Cuesta, Jose
author_facet	Cuesta, Jose
author_sort	Cuesta, Jose
title	Is Long-Term Food Insecurity Inevitable in Asia
title_short	Is Long-Term Food Insecurity Inevitable in Asia
title_full	Is Long-Term Food Insecurity Inevitable in Asia
title_fullStr	Is Long-Term Food Insecurity Inevitable in Asia
title_full_unstemmed	Is Long-Term Food Insecurity Inevitable in Asia
title_sort	is long-term food insecurity inevitable in asia
publisher	Taylor and Francis
publishDate	2014
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20532
_version_	1764445731571105792

Is Long-Term Food Insecurity Inevitable in Asia

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