Browsing by Subject "Food demand"

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Entwicklung der Nahrungsmittelnachfrage und der Angebotspotenziale der Landwirtschaft in der Europäischen Union
(2009) Schönleber, Nicole; Zeddies, Jürgen
A strong growing demand for agricultural commodities for the production of food and bio-energy led to unexpected high world prices in the past years and consequently tightened the usage competition. Shortages of fossil fuels in future will contribute to further increases of commodity prices and therefore intensify the conflict of interests. Growing food scarcity on global level will be an additional problem next to the increasing implications of climate change on agricultural production. Since several years, food demand is growing faster than food supply. The current political goals on environmental and energy issues of specific countries (EU, USA, etc.) provoke a rapid increase in demand for renewable energy sources on a global scale. Consequently these developments aggravate the usage competition for agricultural commodities. The study at hand aims to analyse the potentials of the European agriculture sector for non-food and/or export purposes. Possibly occurring competition between food and bio-energy production shall be detected and excluded from the calculation of expected developments. Accordingly the agricultural accessible area and technically feasible production potentials are analysed for the years 2000, 2010 and 2020 for all member countries of the European Union. Changes of food consumption patterns due to population development, yield increases due to improvements in plant and animal production as well as changes in utilisation of agricultural land are taken into account. Furthermore, fallow land and areas of subsidised surplus production are assumed to be potentially utilised. The results of this study show an increase of food demand for the EU-27 within the years 2000 and 2020. During these decades the per capita consumption of the EU-27 will grow by 5.4 %. Agricultural area will decrease by approx. 6.5 % until 2020. Future yields of Europe?s most important crops are expected to increase. The rise of a weighted yield of the most important crops such as cereals, oilseeds and sugar beets will on average be approx. 24 % from 2000 to 2020. Further utilisable land is expected to be released due to an improved feed utilisation in animal production and possibly by a reduction in subsidised surplus production. The resulting accessible area potential of the EU-27 can be calculated using two approaches. The first approach sums up the individual national potentials to the total potential of the EU-27. This approach assumes that no trade within the European Union is taking place. Additional demand for food has to be imported from third countries. According the first approach, the theoretical accessible land potential sums up to 27.2 million ha (approx. 14.8 % of the agricultural area) in 2020. The second approach is considering the import and export trade within the EU. Deficiencies in the supply of a country will be compensated by a surplus producer country. Therefore, it is assumed that the rate of self-sufficiency of the EU-27 concerning crops, milk and beef is 100 %. Consequently, area potentials of the EU-27 for non-food purposes decrease in comparison to the first approach. According to the calculations, an area potential of 11.5 million ha is estimated for 2020 which corresponds to approx. 6 % of the total agricultural area. In a next step, the output of the potential area of the total EU has been estimated. The production volume of the three most important crops ? cereals, oilseeds (referring to rapeseed) and tuber crops (referring to sugar beets) ? has been calculated considering the current crop ratio. Consequently approx. 14.8 million t of bio-ethanol and 1.8 million t of bio-diesel could result from the estimated crop production volumes in 2020. Referring to the amount of (fossil) fuel consumption in 2005 a share of approx. 13.1 % of motor petrol and approx. 1.0 % of diesel could be replaced. The share of bio-fuels (from domestic production) at the fossil fuel consumption would add up to 5.6 % in 2020. The results of this study show that within the timeframe investigated a strong usage competition of agricultural commodities is not expected for the European Union. Giving priority to a secure food supply within the EU offers considerable area potentials for the expansion of agricultural production for non-food purposes. Agriculture could contribute a substantial share to the targets of the EU energy policy by 2020. Nevertheless only a few member countries of the European Union (France, Germany, Ireland, Czech Republic and Hungary) have the relevant potentials and are able to achieve national energy policy objectives. At the same time fewer commodities are available for export and world food security.