from 1870 to 1920 when the proportion of workers in agriculture
decreased from 72 percent to 49 percent.
Increases in agricultural production in many of the developing
countries are not large compared with the increases required for
national economic development. The upsurge in population growth
is greatly expanding food requirements in the developing countries.
In most of these countries population is increasing at more than 2.5
percent a year, in many it is over 3 percent, and in some it is close
to 4 percent. Death rates in many countries have decreased from
about 45 per 1,000 of total population each year to 20 or even 10
per 1,000. Birth rates have continued high at 40 to 50 per 1,000 of
total population. This has resulted in net population growth rates
of 2.5 to 4 percent a year.
Most developing countries have increased food production as
rapidly as population in the last twenty years. But merely keeping
food production abreast of population growth is not enough. Most
people in these countries are not eating enough food now, and very
few are eating food of the type or quality which they desire and
which is essential for good nutrition.
The income elasticity for food is high in the developing countries,
four to five times as high as in the United States for all food taken
as a whole. And for some foods, such as sugar, meat, eggs, and milk,
it is many times higher still.
Crop production increased more rapidly than population in 21
of the 26 countries during the 1948-63 period (Table 1). But rates
of increase in farm production have decreased in recent years. For
the 26 countries studied, compound annual rate of growth averaged
4.5 percent in the first half of the 1948-63 period as compared
with 3 percent in the second half. Percentage increases in population
have been larger than those for food production in many of the
less developed countries during the last three years.
TOTAL FOOD DEMAND AND OUTPUT
When we add increased demands for food resulting from income
growth to those resulting from population growth, we find that dur-
ing the 1955-63 period expansion in food production did not keep
pace with expansion in total demand for food in 17 of the 26 study
countries (Table 2). The margins are small for the remaining 9
countries. Food production has not kept pace with growing economic
demands for food in most of the developing countries during the
last ten years. Foreign trade data support this observation. Asia and
Latin America had net exports of grain of over 10 million tons a year
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