tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80318574723152048662024-03-13T22:34:54.811-07:00The Nutrition TransitionEvolution is transition.The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-17929444033276311012012-02-07T03:16:00.000-08:002012-02-08T06:18:30.430-08:00Improved food intakes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiidlU8QWTmhJ44kW87Xi3l78YlM9e6hCTU18N85KyFjS0B1-3L1sF6fqa4fylRmV58bSwPNZZ2P863cXWo7w9ajsAxUvifbmyya1ZUzDWZqIOl1F1apdDsIKzECxYnCNXll78Udbfzz6dt/s1600/11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiidlU8QWTmhJ44kW87Xi3l78YlM9e6hCTU18N85KyFjS0B1-3L1sF6fqa4fylRmV58bSwPNZZ2P863cXWo7w9ajsAxUvifbmyya1ZUzDWZqIOl1F1apdDsIKzECxYnCNXll78Udbfzz6dt/s1600/11.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif; text-indent: 40.5pt;">This is a complete abounding chic of applicable as it embraces both all-embracing quantitative assets and specific qualitative changes; and best of the closing address due to these needs is additionally complete difficult to quantify because its abutting levels will be angled by circuitous interplays of economic, political, social, and analysis factors. Neverthe-less, several accustomed abstracts are abundantly solid. In those poor countries that acquire been peaceful and whose agronomics has not been neglected, the abolishment of the adversity comestible deficiencies is not primarily a aggregate of academy accomplishment but rather of bigger acceptance to aliment for the diminutive groups, and appropriately a aggregate acknowledging to fur-ther political and bread-and-butter interventions. Countries alive with years, or akin decades, of con ict acquire no adroit accomplishment for added acceptable diet afterwards peace. Unfortunately, if the able two ancestors are any adviser for the abutting afresh the associate of sub-Saharan Africa, nutritionally the world’s adversity af icted region, offers little hope. A massive communicable of autoimmune absence amore (AIDS) makes African accession akin added unlikely.</span><br />
<div align="justify"><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif;">Most of the abutting address for bigger aliment accession that has a aeriform likelihood of achievement met by accession calm accumulation rather than by aliment aid will appropriately arise as above populations will be earning academy incomes in Asian and Latin American countries. Judging by the associate of every country that has undergone bread-and-butter modernization, conceivably the best attainable amore of this qualitative change will be the academy address for abominable foods. This appears to be a actually accustomed trend as abandoned a complete babyish admeasurement of altruism voluntarily chooses anxiously vegetarian diets and there is additionally a able evolutionary argument in favor of omnivory.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif;">Well-documented studies acquire credible that the abutting abbey ancestors of our brand – the two chimpanzee brand Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus– consistently coursing colobus monkeys and eat added babyish vertebrates (Stanford, 1998). Moreover, Aiello and Wheeler (1995) altercate that the abandoned way bodies could lath above accurateness afterwards adopting their boilerplate metabolic aggregate was by abridgement the admeasurement of accession metabolically big-ticket organ, and that, clashing liver, amore and kidneys, the gastroin- testinal amplitude was the abandoned such tissue whose admeasurement could be adjustment by including added comestible abominable foods in the accustomed abominable diet. Plant-dominated diet supplemented by meat is appropriately our evolutionary ancestor and ascetic herbivory is a cultural adaptation.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif;">Archaeological and abominable affirmation for abominable omnivory is complete and a about beside conduct of bribery animals connected the abominable con-sumption of abominable foods to board milk and dairy accessories from at diminutive bisected a dozen abominable species. When prorated per aggregation of analysis mass, chimpanzee meat intakes are affiliated to alehouse about 6–17 kg a year and this abuttals acutely overlaps the archetypal per capita meat afire of preindustrial societies. Rates beside the lower end of the abuttals (5–10kg/capita) were accustomed in those barbaric societies breadth meat was eaten infrequently and captivated in above aggregate abandoned during some animated occasions; best of the pre-1980 rural China was a complete classic of this adjustment of eating.</span></div><br />
</div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-8232539867408532062012-02-02T04:05:00.000-08:002012-02-07T21:01:00.823-08:00The Nutrition Transition: Diet and Disease in the Developing World<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: red; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 32px;">Evolution is transition. Fueled by ideas, war, scientific breakthroughs, and chance, the relationship of humans with their environment is in constant change, in an endless quest for equilibrium. Food, as a central component of survival, has always been at the center of that evolution. But if we are in constant transition, what does the term “nutrition transition” really define?</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="color: black;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguBtfCZWHa9u1ZSeKcny9FMSQ9SwaGroOnu0E00tTABAfESvPFgIwJH3afInKhPURQVjrejculopCgcbRDb2tNtuQwHr0ojKBIfcTqz0Syz5EFDGpLLjeJyNF8D5UCPMGtPAF55i7usrya/s1600/A2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguBtfCZWHa9u1ZSeKcny9FMSQ9SwaGroOnu0E00tTABAfESvPFgIwJH3afInKhPURQVjrejculopCgcbRDb2tNtuQwHr0ojKBIfcTqz0Syz5EFDGpLLjeJyNF8D5UCPMGtPAF55i7usrya/s320/A2.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Arguably, the concept of transition in the study of human populations was first introduced by Omran in 1971, in an article entitled “The Epidemiologic Transition” (Omran, 1971). In that paper, the author attempted to offer a systematic process by which to identify and characterize change, and in doing so, to be able to predict future trends. Another concept of transition often seen in the literature is the demographic transition – the shift from a pattern of high fertility and high mortality to one of low fertility and low mortality, typical of modern industrialized countries. Interpretations of the demographic and epidemiologic transition share a focus with the nutrition transition on the ways in which populations move from one pattern to the next. This concept of transition may also be applied to the study of changes in the food–diet environment and its impact on health. The concept of nutrition transition, however, goes beyond diet, recognizing that most of the health effects of diets in human populations are also strongly affected by lifestyle, particularly physical activity. We therefore use the term nutrition transition to encompass these shifts not only in diet but also in physical activity and their effects on body composition. In other words, we must explicitly recognize the role of the other non-nutritional factors closely related to the health out-comes of interest.</span> </div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Why does the current nutrition transition merit special attention, and define a specific area of research in nutrition science? First, our ability to identify different patterns of intake in populations and to correlate these with health indicators has advanced sub-stantially over the past decades. Thus, the necessary data have reached a critical mass from which study can progress and inferences can be made. Second, the rate of change is such that its effects can frequently be identified in the population within a generation or two, facilitating their identification and quantification. Third, many of the changes in the area of nutrition and health are closely connected to economic and political changes, thus linking the nutrition transition with key determinants of the historical evolution of countries and regions.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This article focuses on the developing world. Our interest centers on the rapid shifts from a stage often termed the period of receding famine to one dominated by nutrition-related no communicable diseases (NR-NCD). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The most dramatic impact of the changes in food supply, dietary intake and lifestyle can be observed in the developing world. There are several reasons for this. First, the projected growth in world population for the next 30 years will occur almost exclusively in the developing world. Even more importantly, most of that population growth will occur in urban areas, where, as will be shown, the impact of the nutrition transition is most evident. Second, the health consequences of the nutrition transition, a continuing increase in the prevalence of NR-NCD, is having and will continue to have a dramatic impact in countries that, for the most part, have not yet solved the burden of nutritional deficiencies.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Traditionally, the diets of poor countries have been considered insufficient in quantity, and inadequate in quality. One reason for this has been the predominance of higher fiber, lower fat plant sources, which are known to be limited in certain essential nutrients, to have poor bioavailability for essential nutrients, and a low energy density. Paradoxically, the hunter–gatherer and the subsequent diet of countries in phase of receding famine, which are both low in fat and rich in fiber, are today considered the desired pattern for disease prevention in higher income industrialized countries. However, the diet of developing countries also has natural contaminants (goitrogenic substances, natural toxins, pesticides, microbial agents) that are undesirable. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">What fuels the rapid shift in the stage of the nutrition transition? Critical elements include urbanization, internationalization (globalization) of food production and marketing, expansion of mass media and communications, and changes in the work market with predominance of low-energy output labor. Almost 90% of the projected world population growth over the next 20 years will take place in the developing world. Even more striking is the fact that almost all this growth will occur in urban areas. Thus, today’s developing world, still largely defined by the rural poor, will change dramatically in the next two decades, with the progressive dominance of an urban population. Urban dwelling is associated with an array of behaviors and lifestyles that are associated with higher levels of obesity and other NR-NCD. Globalization is a term that generates strong reactions, in spite (or perhaps because) of its vague definition. Included in what we term globalization is a shift in dominance on the economic, technological, cultural, and consumption level of goods that are mass produced by modern techniques and a system that is market driven. Although the term usually applies to recent trends in international trade, globalization has been an essential element for the continuing expansion of market economies since the industrial revolution. For example, by 1840, after the consolidation of the industrial revolution in England, 530 million yards of British cottons were exported to the “underdeveloped” regions of the world, compared to only 200 million for all of Europe (Hobsbawm, 1996). Thus, economic expansion of industrialized countries has historically depended on expansion of markets into the developing world. Market expansion is achieved by selling goods to increasing numbers of people, and also by creating new needs. Culture plays a key role in fulfilling this task; linking products to lifestyles, celebrities, and movies is one of the most effective means of increasing sales of nonessential products. The importance of culture for trade is such that the opinion-shaping industry (ad agencies, entertainment, and media) is one of the leading exports of the US and other developed countries. Television is one of the major purveyors of this cultural context, and it is not surprising that TV ownership and watching are increasing at high pace throughout the developing world (cf. the China case study). Television has a double impact on NR-NCD: as a vehicle for dissemination of unhealthy eating habits, and by promoting physical inactivity. Globalization of food production affects the nutrition transition in a number of ways. Use of modern technologies for mass production reduces the price of selected food items and worldwide distribution and marketing facilitate the introduction of processed foods to a wide range of countries. In turn, driven by the population growth mentioned above, a large proportion of global food production will be driven by the demands of developing countries. A recent study concluded that over the next 20 years, 85% of the increase in the demand for cereals and meat will come from developing countries (Pinstrup-Andersen et al., 1999). Because the food share of the household budget is substantially higher in developing than in developed countries (55% vs. 16% in 1997), changes in food prices and income tend to have a much stronger impact on people’s dietary intake in developing than in developed countries. This effect is reinforced by the stronger price elasticity associated with lower than with higher incomes. Thus, technological advances and aggressive marketing strategies that reduce prices of certain food items in developing markets result in increased consumption. A clear example of this is the increase in consumption of vegetable oils in the developing world (Drewnowski and Popkin, 1997).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 3.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Editors</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 3.0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Benjamin Caballero and Barry M. Popkin</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 3.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Source; http://www.academicpress.com</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-46357775469221149252012-01-26T03:41:00.000-08:002012-02-07T21:01:29.265-08:00Poverty and The Nutrition Transition<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwsXNXVNuAjR4ebpHyrI6_dfUoBumIEKA1NQN2hN4_xKaw5s1CZ34MXI9uW1enBROWBRhyLiZyAawY9KANRu_CZbEnE6rpMd8IOggV30cMpwgQnUDUbZS5H6ql8d-1vRX0Mi22sPizE5Pl/s1600/A1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwsXNXVNuAjR4ebpHyrI6_dfUoBumIEKA1NQN2hN4_xKaw5s1CZ34MXI9uW1enBROWBRhyLiZyAawY9KANRu_CZbEnE6rpMd8IOggV30cMpwgQnUDUbZS5H6ql8d-1vRX0Mi22sPizE5Pl/s1600/A1.jpeg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Data from the past decade and projections for the next 20 years (Murray and Lopez, 1996) indicate a continuing rise in the contribution of no communicable diseases to mortality rates in developing countries, where a large proportion of the global poor lives. But within the developing world population, there are clear differences between the upper and lower socioeconomic groups. Among the poorest 20%, communicable diseases still account for about 60% of deaths, whereas they account for only 8% among the richest 20% (Gwatkin et al., 1999). A confounding factor may be the difference in population patterns between richer and poorer countries, with the latter having as much as twice the number of under-15 population, which has higher rates of communicable disease than older groups. Although it is likely that the younger population of the developing world still faces infectious diseases as a major threat to health and quality of life, the burden of no communicable diseases continues to mount for the older poor. As economic status and education improve, populations in developing countries around the world respond quite consistently by demanding more animal protein in their diet. In many cases, this demand is justified, since their typical diet is usually low in zinc, iron, selenium, retinol, and other essential nutrients found primarily in animal sources. However, increases in the animal protein content of diets almost invariably increase the content in saturated fats, which is undesirable. The role of genes in the human adaptation to rapid environmental changes has been postulated for many decades, but only with advances in molecular genetics can we identify with some clarity the interactions between genes and environmental components such as diet. Populations living under subsistence conditions are forced to maximize their potential for survival, and it is likely that specific sets of genes are activated to facilitate this process. Thus, rapid changes in the environment, even when positive (e.g., more food available) will tend to perturb that precarious equilibrium between the genome and the environment. If the genetic makeup of some individuals does not allow for a rapid shift to the new environmental conditions, adverse health effects may result. This hypothetical but probable phenomenon can be seen within the same generation, i.e., children who were malnourished early in life becoming more prone to obesity as adults. The particular genetic makeup of populations in developing countries, of which we know so little, adds a unique and important element to the impact of the nutrition transition on health. Individuals “miss-adapted” to the new dietary conditions may have a higher risk of adverse health effects.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-58588648083108366532012-01-17T03:37:00.000-08:002012-02-07T21:02:11.102-08:00Economic and technological development and their relationships to body size and productivity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: magenta; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf4SHpm18HE04nowrTdhWT_PHNTgVB0ygxFF0RtDVXaeAjYjR7ODAV_G37bwLYytXlSum3dpZuhzIG_CibxRXSSiDzOJQwqShe9ToAlclegaapa2pLt1rJVOgDOwFwouxIOTPaYT_DEzQ0/s1600/A3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf4SHpm18HE04nowrTdhWT_PHNTgVB0ygxFF0RtDVXaeAjYjR7ODAV_G37bwLYytXlSum3dpZuhzIG_CibxRXSSiDzOJQwqShe9ToAlclegaapa2pLt1rJVOgDOwFwouxIOTPaYT_DEzQ0/s1600/A3.jpeg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;">Robert W. Fogel and Lorens A. Helmchen, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 32px;">The growth in material wealth has been matched by changes in body size over the past 300 years, especially during the twentieth century. Perhaps the most remarkable secular trend has been the reduction in mortality. Between 1900 and 1998, life expectancy at birth in the United States increased by 65% for women, from 48.3 years to 79.5 years, and by 60% for men, from 46.3 years to 73.8 years (National Center for Health Statistics, 2001). Table 2.1 provides an overview of the long-term trend in life expectancy at birth for seven nations. The data show that in England life expectancy has more than doubled since the early eighteenth century. France has recorded even larger gains in longevity. French children born today can expect to live nearly three times longer than their ancestors 250 years ago.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Table 2.1</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Life expectancy at birth (years) in seven nations, 1725–1990 (both sexes combined)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Country 1725 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 1990</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">England or UK 32 37 36 40 48 69 76</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">France 26 33 42 46 67 77</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">US 50 51 56 43 47 68 76</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Egypt 42 60</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">India 27 39 59</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">China 41 70</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Japan 61 79</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Source: Fogel (in press).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Table 2.2</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Estimated average final heights (cm) of men who reached maturity between 1750 and</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1875 in six European populations, by quarter centuries</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Date of maturity by Great Britain Nor way Sweden France Denmark Hungary</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">century and quarter</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">18-III 165.9 163.9 168.1 168.7</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">18-IV 167.9 166.7 163.0 165.7 165.8</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">19-I 168.0 166.7 164.3 165.4 163.9</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">19-II 171.6 168.0 165.2 166.8 164.2</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">19-III 169.3 168.6 169.5 165.6 165.3</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">20-III 175.0 178.3 177.6 172.0 176.0 170.9</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Source: Author’s calculations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Although not as significant numerically, final heights of European men who reached maturity have also been increasing over the past two centuries, as shown in Table 2.2. In some countries, average heights increased by as much as 10 cm per century. Body weight has also increased. Figure 2.1 shows that for some age groups, the body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight adjusted for height (equal to kg/m increased by about 10–15% within the past 100 years. This chapter aims to elucidate the long-run relationship between labor productivity and body size. In particular, it will be shown that improvements in the nutritional status of a number of societies in Western Europe since the early eighteenth century may have initiated a virtuous circle of technophysio evolution. The theory of technophysio evolution posits the existence of a synergism between technological and physiological improvements that has produced a form of human evolution that is biological but not genetic, rapid, culturally transmitted, and not necessarily stable over time. In the con-text of the present study, we suggest that an increase in agricultural efficiency and labor productivity improved human physiology, in turn leading to further gains in labor productivity. The next two sections identify how the early modern advances in agriculture and the increased availability of calories per capita raised labor productivity over the course of successive generations. This is followed by an analysis of the determinants and consequences of accelerating productivity gains in American agriculture after World War II to illustrate the changing relationship among nutrition, body size, and labor productivity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Energy cost accounting</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Nutritional status is most commonly measured by the amount of calories available per person balanced against caloric requirements, also referred to as net nutrition</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The principal component of the total energy requirement is represented by the basal metabolic rate (BMR). The BMR, which varies with age, sex, and body size is the amount of energy required to maintain body temperature and to sustain the functioning of the heart, liver, brain, and other organs. For adult males aged 20–39 years living in moderate climates, BMR normally ranges between 1350 and 2000 kcal/day depending on height and weight. For comparison across time and different populations, it is convenient to standardize for the age and sex distribution of a population by converting the per capita consumption of calories into consumption per equivalent adult male aged 20–39, also referred to as a consuming unit. Since the BMR does not allow for the energy required to eat and digest food, or for essential hygiene, an individual cannot survive on the calories needed for basal metabolism. The energy required for these additional essential activities over a period of 24 hours is estimated at 0.27 of BMR or 0.4 of BMR during waking hours. In other words, a survival diet is 1.27 BMR, or between 1720 and 2540 kcal/day for a consuming unit. A maintenance diet contains no allowance for the energy required to earn a living, prepare food, or any other activities beyond those connected with eating and essential hygiene.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Whatever calories are available beyond those claimed for basal metabolism and maintenance can be used at the discretion of the individual, either for work or for leisure activities.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Chronic malnutrition in late-eighteenth century Europe</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">According to recent estimates, the average caloric consumption in France on the eve of the French Revolution was about 2290 kcal per consuming unit, that for England was about 2700 kcal per consuming unit. These averages, however, do not reveal the variation in caloric consumption within the French and English populations. Table 2.3 shows the probable French and English distributions of the daily consumption of kcal per consuming unit toward the end of the eighteenth century. The principal finding that emerges from this table is the exceedingly low level of food production, especially in France, at the start of the Industrial Revolution. The French distribution of calories implies that 2.48% of the population had caloric consumption below basal metabolism, whereas the proportion of the English population below basal metabolism was 0.66%. For the remainder of the population, the level of work capacity permitted by the food supply was very low, even after allowing for the reduced requirements for maintenance because of small stature and reduced body mass. In France the bottom 10% of the labor force lacked the energy for regular work and the next 10% had enough energy for less than 3 hours of light work daily (0.52 hours of heavy work).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Although the English situation was somewhat better, the bottom 3% of its labor force lacked the energy for any work, while the balance of the bottom 20% had enough energy for only about 6 hours of light work (1.09 hours of heavy work) each day. Thus, at the end of the eighteenth century, the lack of access to sufficient calories effectively restricted the amount of activity (whether for income or leisure) that most laborers could perform, and it effectively precluded others from working at all.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Table 2.3</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">A comparison of the probable French and English distributions of the daily caloric</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">consumption (kcal) per consuming unit toward the end of the eighteenth century</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Decile France c. 1785 England c. 1790</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">X 2290 (s/X) 0.3 X 2700 (s/X) 0.3</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Daily kcal Cumulative % Daily kcal Cumulative %</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">consumption consumption</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1. Highest 3672 100 4329 100</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">2. Ninth 2981 84 3514 84</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">3. Eighth 2676 71 3155 71</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">4. Seventh 2457 59 2897 59</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">5. Sixth 2276 48 2684 48</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">6. Fifth 2114 38 2492 38</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">7. Fourth 1958 29 2309 29</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">8. Third 1798 21 2120 21</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">9. Second 1614 13 1903 13</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">10. First 1310 6 1545 6</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Sources and procedures: Author’s calculations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Table 2.4</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Secular trends in the daily caloric supply in France and Great Britain 1700–1989</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">(kcal per capita)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Year France Great Britain</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 315.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1700 2095</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1705 1657</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 315.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1750 2168</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1785 1848</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 315.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1800 2237</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1803–12 1846</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1845–54 2480</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 315.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1850 2362</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 315.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1909–13 2857</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1935–39 2975</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1954–55 2783 3231</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 315.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1961 3170</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1965 3355 3304</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1989 3465 3149</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Source: Fogel et al. (in press).</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-834486080484981562012-01-10T03:36:00.000-08:002012-02-07T21:03:16.920-08:00How better nutrition raised output per capita<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 32px;">Table 2.4 shows secular trends in the daily caloric supply in France and Great Britain from 1700 to 1989. Per capita availability of calories more than doubled in this period in France, and increased by about 50% in Great Britain, where caloric supply was 30% larger than that in France at the beginning of the period.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Framework</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">How did the substantial increase in calories per capita affect labor productivity? Labor productivity can be defined as the output of marketable goods and services that a typical worker can produce over the span of one day. Daily output per worker, in turn, can be decomposed into the output per calorie expended at work and the daily amount of calories expended on the job by a typical worker. By multiplying the daily output per worker by the number of workers per inhabitant (which is called the labor force participation rate) output per worker is transformed into output per capita, which is used as a measure of the standard of living: Output of goods and services produced per capita per day daily output of goods and services per calorie expended in their production daily amount of calories expended in production per worker labor force participation rate In this decomposition, the technological breakthroughs in farming raised yields for a given effort level, represented here as increases in the output per calorie expended in production. At given levels of annual calories expended in production per worker and labor force participation rate, this must have raised the volume of agricultural output per capita. Higher levels of labor productivity in agriculture also allowed parts of the labor force to be employed in nonagricultural sectors of the economy without reducing farm output per person, thus diversifying the range of goods and services produced domestically. To understand the full effect of gains in agricultural efficiency, however, it is necessary to take into account how the additional calories were used. Those adults who had been working before the development and diffusion of more productive farming methods could now increase the annual amount of calories expended while working, either by performing more energy-intensive tasks or by working additional hours, or both. This increase in calories expended in production by a typical worker further increased the amount of calories produced (and ultimately consumed) per capita. In addition to boosting the calories available to workers, the expansion of the food supply also made more calories available for members of the poorest segment of the adult population who had had only enough energy above maintenance for a few hours of strolling each day – about the amount needed by a beggar – but less on average than that needed for just one hour of the heavy manual labor required in agriculture. To the extent that these persons now had the energy to work, they raised the labor force participation rate, which led to a further increase in per capita output. Table 2.5 summarizes the daily amount of energy available for work in France, and England and Wales from 1700 to 1980. The most impressive gains are reected by the data for France, where calories available for work increased nearly fivefold within less than 200 years. In total, by increasing agricultural yields per calorie expended, the Second Agricultural Revolution expanded the availability of calories per capita, drawing more people into the labor force and raising on-the-job calorie expenditures of those working. This boost in the population’s productive capacity in turn fueled further growth not only in food output per capita. It also helped to raise the output in all other, nonagricultural sectors of the economy that benefited from an increase in workers and hours worked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The effect of improved nutrition on productivity and output</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Table 2.5</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">A comparison of energy available for work daily per consuming unit in France, and England and Wales, 1700–1980 (in kcal)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Year France England and Wales</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 333.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1700 720</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1705 439</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 333.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1750 812</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1785 600</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 333.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1800 858 </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1803–12</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1840</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1845–54</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 333.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1850 1014</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1870 1671</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1880</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1944</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1975 2136</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 333.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1980 1793</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Source: Fogel et al. (in press).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Empirical estimate</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Time series of anthropometric and macroeconomic statistics can be combined to estimate the contribution of better nutrition to the growth of output per person. The most reliable and complete data in this regard have been collected for England. As noted in the introduction, between 1780 and 1979 British per capita income grew at an annual rate of about 1.15% (Maddison, 1982). Data are now available to measure the changes in calories available for work and the labor force participation rate. For Britain, it has been estimated that the increases in the supply of calories lifted as much as one fifth of all consuming units above the threshold required for work. As a result, the labor force participation rate increased by 25% over 200 years, contributing 0.11% to the annual British growth rate between 1780 and 1980 (1.25 1 0.0011). 0.005 The increased supply of calories also raised the average consumption of calories by those in the labor force from 2944 kcal per consuming unit in c.1790 to 3701kcal per consuming unit in 1980. Of these amounts, 1009 kcal were available for work inc. 1790 and 1569 in 1980, so that calories available for discretionary activities increased by about 56% during the two centuries. If it is assumed that the proportion of the avail-able energy devoted to work has been unchanged between the end points of the period, then the increase in the amount of energy available for work contributed about 0.23% per annum to the annual growth rate of per capita income (1.561 0.0023).0.0053 Thus, in combination, bringing the ultra-poor into the labor force and raising the energy available for work by those in the labor force, explains about 30% of British growth in per capita income over the past two centuries [(0.0023 0.0011) 0.0115 0.30]. As incomes in OECD countries have risen, the share of discretionary time devoted to working for income has declined. Consequently, it is unlikely that further increases in the amount of calories available per person in those countries will raise labor force. However, the immediate effect of better nutrition on labor productivity still holds enormous potential in poor countries where malnutrition is widespread.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The self-reinforcing cycle of greater body size and higher productivity</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In addition to the direct effect of better nutrition on the growth of output per person, the conquest of chronic malnutrition has had a long-term effect on human physiology, which has taken several generations to unfold. The role of long-term changes of nutritional status in altering body size is inferred from applying energy cost accounting to an analysis of food balance sheets. In particular, to have the energy necessary to produce the national product of either France or England c. 1700, the typical adult male must have been quite short and very light in weight. The smaller body size reduced the basal metabolic rate and thereby freed up calories that could be used for work. As per capita food supplies expanded, so did not only hours worked but also body size. The increase in body size, in turn, improved health and the capacity of individuals to raise labor productivity further, thus rein-forcing the initial increase in labor productivity.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com1United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-43468929095138609352012-01-03T03:35:00.000-08:002012-02-07T21:04:20.773-08:00The effect of improved nutrition on body size, morbidity and mortality The gain in weight 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">As was pointed out earlier, the energy that an individual takes in through food consumption will be spent to maintain body temperature and vital organ functions, as wellas for eating, sleeping, and essential hygiene. The remainder is available for discretionary use, such as work and leisure. It was also shown that the additional calories that became available in the wake of the Second Agricultural Revolution were used to engage in more energy-intensive tasks and increase labor force participation. Energy not used is stored, leading to weight gain. As such, the body mass index may be interpreted as a measure of net nutrition, which is defined as the excess of calories ingested over calories claimed for maintenance and discretionary use. Figure 2.1 documents the secular increase in body mass index for white men between 1864 and 1991.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The self-reinforcing cycle of greater body size and higher productivity</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">2.14</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 112.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> Modern Norwegian males</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 346.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> Union Army veterans</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">0.88</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 67.5pt 166.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">BMI</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">Figure 2.2 Relative mortality risk by BMI among men 50 years of age, Union Army veterans around 1900 and modern Norwegians (from Costa and Steckel, 1997). In the Norwegian data BMI for 79084 men was measured at ages 45–49 and the period of risk was 7 years. BMI of Union Army veterans was measured at ages 45–64 and the observation period was 25 years. Costa and Steckel (1997). Reproduced with kind permission from The University of Chicago Press. © 1997 by the National Bureau of Economic Research.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It has been shown that eliminating chronic hunger will strengthen the body’s defenses against infectious diseases, thus lowering the risk of contracting diseases and premature death. The relationship between weight, as measured by the Body Mass Index, and mortality was established empirically by Hans Waaler (1984) for Norwegian men aged 45–49 and confirmed for a sample of Union Army veterans measured at ages 45–64 and followed for 25 years. Figure 2.2 shows a U-shaped relationship between BMI and the relative risk of death for both samples. Among both modern Norwegians and Union Army veterans the curve is quite at within the range 22–28, with the relative risk of mortality hovering close to 1.0, which represents the average risk of death in the population. However, at BMIs of less than 22 and over 28, the risk of death rises sharply as BMI moves away from its mean value.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: magenta; text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The gain in height</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A larger and better survival diet allowed adult members of the generation that first witnessed the rise in agricultural efficiency to increase weight, and, consequently, to improve health and extend life. Better nutrition of pregnant women also improved the nutritional status of fetuses and infants. Access to sufficient amounts of calories and other vital nutrients in utero and developmental ages has been shown to affect the off-spring’s final height. Thus, whereas the immediate effect of the improvements in food</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Economic and technological development and their relationships to body size and productivity</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.5</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.0</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">0.5</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 40.5pt 1.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Height (inches)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Figure 2.3</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Relative mortality risk among Union Army veterans and among Norwegian males. Author’s</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Calculations</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Supply was to raise the amount of energy spent at work and to boost body weight, the long-run impact over the course of several generations has been an increase instature. This conclusion is supported by the time series on mean final heights for various European populations, shown in Table 2.2. Waaler (1984) also identified the role of body height as a factor in uencing morbidity and mortality. Figure 2.3 plots the relationship between relative mortality risk and height found among Norwegian men aged 40–59 measured in the 1960s and among Union Army veterans measured at ages 23–49 and at risk between ages 55 and 75. Short men, whether modern Norwegians or nineteenth-century Americans, were much more likely to die early than tall men. Height has also been found to be an important predictor of the relative likelihood that men aged 23–49 would be rejected from the Union Army between 1861 and 1865 because of chronic diseases. Despite significant differences in ethnicity, environmental circumstances, the array and severity of diseases, and time, the functional relationship between height and relative risk are strikingly similar in the two cases. To gauge the relative importance of height and weight for an individual’s risk of mortality, an isomortality surface that relates the risk of death to both height and weight simultaneously is needed. Such a surface, presented in Fig. 2.4, was fitted to Waaler’s data. Transecting the isomortality map are iso-BMI lines that give the locus of BMI between 16 and 34. The heavy line transecting the minimum point of each iso-mortality curve represents the weight that minimizes mortality risk at each height. Since an individual’s height cannot be varied by changes in nutrition after maturity, adults can move to a more desirable BMI only by changing their weight. Therefore, the x-axis is interpreted as a measure of the effect of the current nutritional status of mature males on adult mortality rates. Moreover, since most stunting takes place before age three, the y-axis is interpreted as a measure of the effect of nutritional.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The self-reinforcing cycle of greater body size and higher productivity</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 63.0pt 261.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> Isomortality-risk curves Iso-BMI curves Minimum-risk curve</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 85.5pt 315.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> (0.7–2.2) (16–34)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.95</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.90</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.85</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.80</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.75</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 279.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> 1975</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.70</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 193.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.65 1870</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 1.75in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> 1785</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.60</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 76.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> 1705</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.55</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 333.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">40 50 60 70 80 90 110 100</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Weight (kg)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Figure 2.4</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Isomortality curves of relative risk for height and weight among Norwegian males aged 50–64 years, with a plot of the estimated French height and weight at four dates. Author’s calculations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Deprivation during developmental ages (including in utero) on the risk of mortality at middle and late ages. Superimposed on Fig. 2.4 are rough estimates of heights and weights in France at four dates. In 1705 the French probably achieved equilibrium with their food supply at an average height of about 161 cm and BMI of about 18. Over the next 270 years the food supply expanded fast enough to permit both the height and the weight of adult males to increase. Figure 2.4 shows that the increase in available food per per-son translated mostly into weight gain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During the twentieth century the gains in calories per capita served mainly to increase height. Between 1870 and 1975 height increased at more than twice the rate that it did during the previous 165 years. Figure 2.4 implies that although factors associated with height and weight jointly explain about 90% of the estimated decline in French mortality rates over the period between 1785 and c. 1870, they only explain about 50% of the decline in mortality rates during the past century.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-46864282941508370442011-12-23T03:33:00.000-08:002012-02-07T21:05:06.329-08:00The effect of lower morbidity and mortality on labor productivity & Productivity-induced demographic and economic change in the USA 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The unprecedented gains in life expectancy over the past 300 years, the reductions in disease prevalence, and the increasing age at onset of disability have all contributed to raise the number of years free of disease and disability that a person born today can expect to live. In addition, the development of cures for many conditions and the pro-vision of effective symptom management for those conditions that cannot be cured have eliminated or reduced significantly the age-specific rates of functional impairment that used to be associated with many diseases. The immediate effect of longer lives is that now more people will be able to use their accumulated experience longer, and that they are more likely to share more of their life span with their children and grandchildren. As a result of improvements in human physiology and major advances in medicine, the number of disability and symptom-free years of life that remain at any given age is now much larger than it has ever been. This creates strong incentives for individuals to undertake measures aimed at preserving physical functioning and cognitive ability, also referred to as investments in human capital. Individuals respond by under-taking more of these investments, which include purchases of preventive and rehabilitative medical services as well as the acquisition of new skills and knowledge. For instance, in 1910, only 13% of adults in the United States were high school graduates and only 3% were college graduates. By 1998, the comparable percentages were 83 and 24, respectively (Caplow et al., 2000). It is no coincidence that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, healthcare and educational services constitute two of the fastest growing sectors of the US economy, as they do in most other OECD nations. Not only do these activities maintain or improve the quality of life but they also enhance labor productivity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: magenta; text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Productivity-induced demographic and economic change in the USA</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The relationships between technological development, nutrition, body size, and economic change have become most apparent over the course of the past century. They are perhaps best illustrated by examining the consequences of the dramatic improvements in labor productivity experienced by the agricultural sector in the United States since the end of World War II. From 1948 to 1994, agricultural output more than doubled, expanding at an average annual rate of 1.9% (Ahearn et al., 1998). During the same period, total hours worked in agriculture, adjusted for quality, fell by more than two-thirds, or 2.7% annually. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> These figures imply that between 1948 and 1994 US agricultural output per hour rose at an average rate of 4.6% per annum, a more than nine fold increase over the span of fifty years. This surge in agricultural labor productivity is attributable to steadily improving yields and an increase in the acreage cultivated per hour. For instance, the introduction of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer, combined with higher-yielding crop varieties raised the amount of potatoes per harvested acre by a factor of almost 2.5 between 1948 and 1994 (US Department of Agriculture, 2000). Similarly, the number of acres cultivated per hour has been raised dramatically by the mechanization of agriculture, at an average annual rate of about 3%. As agricultural labor became more productive, the numbers of annual hours per worker as well as the number of workers were cut without curtailing agricultural output. Although annual hours per agricultural worker declined by 1% per year, the number of agricultural workers fell even more rapidly, by 1.7% per year (Ahearn et al., 1998). Those workers who were released from the agricultural sector found employment in other sectors of the economy, where they helped to raise output of other goods that consumers wanted, or they stopped working altogether. The fraction of the labor force employed in agriculture fell from 13% in 1948 to 3.2% in 1998 (US Bureau of the Census, 1976; Braddock, 1999; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2001). Despite the sharply declining number of hours worked, the growth of US agricultural output has been outpacing the growth of the population during the past 50 years. Whereas from 1948 to 1994 agricultural output grew by 1.9% annually, the population of the United States grew on average by 1.2% per annum (US Department of Commerce, 2000). As a result, agricultural output per capita increased at an annual rate of approximately 0.7%. Compounded over the second half of the twentieth century, therefore, agricultural output per capita, which can be used to assess a country’s capacity to supply its inhabitants with calories, increased by about 40%.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-1241719798077538912011-12-17T03:32:00.000-08:002012-02-07T21:05:44.572-08:00Conclusion and outlook<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The sections above have documented how advances in agricultural efficiency after 1700 allowed the societies of Europe and North America to expand and improve their diets by an unprecedented degree. The rise in agricultural efficiency set off a self-reinforcing cycle of improvements in nutrition and gains in labor productivity, leading to a substantial increase in per capita output, which has come to be known as “modern economic growth”. It was shown how the initial increase in agricultural. Efficiency was magnified by providing the population with enough additional calories to boost the number of acres cultivated per hour, annual hours worked, and the labor force participation rate. Based on the notion that variations in the size of individuals have been a principal mechanism in equilibrating the population with the food supply, improved net nutrition has been identified as the primary long-term determinant of the sharp increase in the number of disability-free years of life. The gains in longevity, in turn, have created an incentive for individuals to maintain and upgrade skills and personal health. This line of argument underpins the prediction that the conquest of malnutrition may continue to raise the productivity and innovative capacity of the labor force in the West. The time series of various components of agricultural output per capita in the United States since World War II has been analyzed and combined with the data presented, the following conclusions emerge for the advanced economies of Western Europe and North America.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•Output per acre cultivated has been increasing throughout the period under study.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•Acres cultivated per hour have been increasing throughout this period, first because human energy available for work increased, then because animal and inanimate power complemented and eventually substituted for human energy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•Annual hours worked per agricultural worker increased at first, as more calories became available for discretionary use, but have been declining recently and are expected to continue to decline.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•The rise in agricultural labor productivity has permitted the number of agricultural workers per inhabitant to decline without lowering the amount of calories available per person.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•The declining share of agricultural workers in the labor force permitted other sectors of the economy to grow, thus greatly diversifying and expanding the range of nonagricultural goods and services. The recent reversal of some key trends in energy intensity of work and labor force participation rates suggests that the economic and epidemiologic consequences from the unprecedented improvement of human nutrition in the rich countries are still being played out. Up to World War II the energy intensity and quantity of work in Europe was limited by the availability of food per capita. Since then, however, caloric intake has not only matched individual caloric requirements but tends to exceed calorie expenditure in an increasing portion of the population. One indicator of this tendency is the growing prevalence of obese adults in the United States, which between 1960 and 1994 increased from 13.3% to 23.3% (National Center for Health Statistics, 2001). This trend is compounded by the fact that the progressive substitution of human energy by inanimate power and the concomitant expansion of sedentary work have led to a gradual reduction of calories expended per hour worked. The continued increase in agricultural output per person coupled with lower energy requirements on the job. may portend two, not mutually exclusive, scenarios for the next stage of the nutrition transition in the world’s richest countries.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">1. As more and more people work in occupations that do not place high demands on calorie supply, they may decide to increase energy spent during leisure hours. In addition, further gains in stature and weight will raise the calories needed for maintenance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">2. Alternatively, workers may decide to reduce their overall calorie intake to bring it into line with the decreased amounts of calories at work. Although expenditure on food may not decline in absolute terms, consumers may opt to substitute increasingly away from quantity toward quality of calories and become choosier regarding those calories that they decide to purchase and ingest. To the extent that pressure for advances in productivity and greater per capita supply of calories wanes in rich countries, it is conceivable that forms of agriculture that are less productive in calories will gain popularity to accommodate other criteria in the selection of agricultural products and processes. For example, organic agriculture, which renounces the use of certain herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, accepts lower yields per acre in order to reduce environmental hazards. Similarly, a shift in consumer preferences may prompt the cultivation of crops that sell at a premium but require more care or are less nutritious, thus lowering the amount of calories per hour worked. The situation is very different in poor countries where more than 800 million people are chronically undernourished (FAO, 1999). Progress in agricultural productivity remains the focus of most programs aimed at raising the per capita supply of calories and other vital nutrients. Yet even in countries where average food consumption is deemed adequate, an unequal distribution of income may effectively preclude the poorest parts of the population from obtaining sufficient calories, as was shown for late eighteenth-century England and France. Recent data from developing countries confirm the association of greater income inequality with increased food insecurity and smaller body size (Steckel, 1995; Shapouri and Rosen, 1999). Whatever the approach to alleviating chronic hunger in developing countries, improving the food supply could unlock the short-term and long-term effects of better nutrition on labor productivity that have had such a lasting impact on the growth trajectories of Europe and North America.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-44574392215329790582011-12-13T03:29:00.002-08:002012-02-08T06:15:12.856-08:00Food production<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;">Vaclav Smil</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Humans acquire relied during the beforehand of their change on a basal of aural bureau to dedicated their aliment supply. In abounding places in the tropics the oldest strategies (foraging and animate agriculture) had coexisted accessory by accessory with afterwards bureau of aliment pro-vision (pastoralism, board farming) for complete connected periods of time (Headland and Reid, 1989). In others, China achievement a complete example, the age-old bureau of board agronomics were gradually acclimatized into abounding added advantageous bureau of growing crops. Foraging (food accretion and hunting) bedeviled all abominable and best of abominable achievement and some of its key comestible attributes will be acclaimed in the ancient breadth of this associate alms a brusque history of aliment production. In this breadth I will additionally calendar a basal of adequate agronomical practices, as they are still complete abounding in affirmation throughout the developing world. My assay of the accustomed all-around aliment bearings will focus primarily on accumulation and afire gaps amidst developed and developing countries (I accept to assuming them artlessly flush and poor).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">While adorable avant-garde I will abjure any quantitative point forecasts, as these tend to become accidental about as afresh as they are published; instead, I will assay the basic factors that will be alive changes in aliment address during the abutting 50 years. Increased address for abominable foods will be a key accretion of this change and appropriately I will admeasure a absent breadth to apologue its adequate beforehand and its after-effects for the all-around address for feeds. I will abutting by affirmation the allegation for two analytic kinds of beforehand in agriculture: in the aliment of irreplaceable Eco systemic structures and casework afterwards which no agronomics can succeed, and in abiogenetic engineering whose advances will admonition to abate malnutrition akin as the citizenry of developing countries keeps expanding.</span><br />
</div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-81940685589081674272011-12-01T03:29:00.000-08:002012-02-07T21:51:52.290-08:00A brief history of food production & Foraging societies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">A brief history of food production</span></b></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Every new find of hominid remains in East Africa reignites the controversy about the origin of our species, but at least one conclusion remains unchanged: we have come from a long lineage of opportunistic foragers, and for millions of years both the natural diet and the foraging strategies of hominids resembled those of their primate ancestor (Whiten and Widdowson, 1992). Larger brains improved the odds of their survival but to secure food, hominids relied only on their muscles and on simple stratagems as scavengers, gatherers, hunters, and fishers helped by stone implements, bows and arrows and by fibrous or leather lines and nets. Controlled use of fire needed to prepare cooked food may have come first nearly half a million years ago, but a more certain time is about 250000 years ago (Goudsblom, 1992). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Childe’s (1951) idea of Neolithic Revolution has been one of the most unfortunate caricatures of human evolution: there was no sudden shift from foraging to sedentary farming. Diminishing returns in gathering and hunting led to a gradual extension of incipient cultivation present in many foraging societies, and foraging and agriculture commonly coexisted for very long periods of time (Smil, 1994). Similarly, there were no abrupt changes in the way most traditional agricultures produced food; some places experienced prolonged stagnation, or even declines, in overall food output, others have undergone gradual intensification of crop cultivation that has resulted in higher yields and more secure food supplies. Even then, traditional farming was able to produce only monotonous diets and it remained highly vulnerable to environmental stresses. Only modern agriculture, highly intensive and fossil fuel-based, has been able to produce enormous surpluses of food in all af uent nations and to raise most of the world’s populous developing countries at least close to, and for most of the Chinese even well above, subsistence minima.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: orange; text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Foraging societies</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The great diversity of the preserved archaeological record makes it impossible to offer any simple generalizations concerning prehistoric diets. Modern studies of foraging societies that have survived in extreme environments (tropical rain forest, semideserts) into the 20th century have provided very limited insight into the lives of prehistoric foragers in more equable climates and more fertile areas. Moreover, these societies have often been affected by contacts with pastoralism, farmers or overseas migrants. Given the unimpressive physical endowment of early humans and the absence of effective weapons, it is most likely that our ancestors were initially much better scavengers than hunters (Blumenschine and Cavallo, 1992). Large predators often left behind partially eaten carcasses and this meat, or at least the nutritious bone marrow, could be reached by enterprising early humans before it was devoured by vultures and hyenas.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Fishing, collecting of shellfish, and near-shore hunting of sea mammals provided diet unusually rich in proteins and made it possible to live in semi permanent, and even permanent, settlements (Price, 1991). In contrast, both gathering and hunting were surprisingly unrewarding in species-rich tropical forests where energy-rich seeds are a very small portion of total plant mass and are mostly inaccessible in high canopies, as are most animals, which are also relatively small and highly mobile. Grasslands and open woodlands offered much better opportunities for both collecting and hunting. Many highly nutritious seeds and nuts were easy to reach, and patches of large starchy roots and tubers provided particularly high energy returns. So did the hunting of many grasslands herbivores which were often killed without any weapons, by driving the herds over precipices. This hunting was intensive enough to explain the disappearance of most large herbivores from preagricultural landscapes (Alroy, 2001). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">There is no doubt that all pre agricultural societies were omnivorous and that although they collected and killed a large variety of plant and animal species only a few principal foodstuffs usually dominated their diets. Preference for seeds and nuts among gatherers was inevitable; they are easy to collect, and they combine high energy con-tent (13–26 MJ/kg) with relatively high protein shares (commonly above 10%). Wild grass seeds have as much food energy as cultivated grains (15MJ/kg), and nuts have energy densities up to 75% higher. All wild meat is an excellent source of protein ( 20%) but the esh of small and agile animals (e.g., hares or monkeys) contains very little fat ( 10%) and hence has very low energy density (5–6 MJ/kg). Consequently, there has been a widespread hunting preference for such large and relatively fatty species, such as mammoths and bison's (containing 10–12MJ/kg). Even so, except for maritime hunters of fatty fish (salmon) and mammals (whales, seals), lipids usually supplied no more than 20% of food energy in preagricultural societies. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The extremes of daily intakes of animal protein among the remaining foraging populations studied after 1950 range from more than 300 g/capita among Inuit feeding on whales, seals, fish, and caribou to less than 20 g a day for foragers in arid African environments subsisting mainly on nuts and tubers (Smil, 1994). Eaton and Konner (1997) used nutrient analyses of wild plant and animal foods eaten by recent gatherers and hunters in order to estimate the dominant composition of prevailing preagri-cultural diets. They concluded that compared to the typical recent US intakes they were more than twice as rich in fiber, potassium, and calcium, but contained less than one-third of today’s sodium consumption. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Prehistoric survival modes and diets were extremely diverse but this fact has not prevented some anthropologists making inadmissible generalizations. Undoubtedly, for some groups the total foraging effort was low, only a few hours a day, and this fact, confirmed by some modern field surveys, led to the portrayal of foragers as “the original af uent society” (Sahlins, 1972). This conclusion, based on very limited and highly debatable evidence, ignored the reality of much of the hard, and often dangerous, work in foraging and the frequency with which environmental stresses repeatedly affected most foraging societies. Seasonal food shortages in actuating climates necessitated the eating of unpalatable plant tissues and led to weight loss, low fertility, high infant mortality, infanticide and often to devastating famines (Smil, 1994).</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-54407791612523716622011-11-26T03:26:00.000-08:002012-02-07T20:51:19.069-08:00Traditional agriculture's<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In comparison to foraging, traditional farming nearly always required higher inputs of human energy (and later also of animal labor), but it could support higher population densities and provide a more reliable food supply. Whereas foraging (except for maritime hunting) could support no more than a few people per 100 hectares (ha) of territory used for gathering and hunting, early traditional agricultures managed to support at least one person/ha of arable land (Fig. 3.1). By the end of the 19th century China’s nationwide mean was above five people/ha, and double cropping of rice and wheat in the most fertile areas could yield enough to feed 12–15 people/ha (Smil, 1994).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 202.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Modern farming</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 153.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Traditional farming</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 1.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Shifting farming</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Pastoralism</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 2.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Foraging</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 10</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Population density (people/ha)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Figure 3.1</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Comparison of carrying capacities of the principal modes of human food production showing that farming can support 10–10 more people than foraging (based on Smil, 2000).</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The need for higher energy inputs explains why so many foraging societies kept delaying adoption of permanent cultivation and why shifting farming – a less intensive method of cultivation alternating short (1–3 years) cropping periods with much longer (a decade or more) fallow spells – was practiced so extensively. In spite of many regional and local differences there were many fundamental similarities that persisted across the millennia of traditional farming. Above all, these agricultures were entirely renewable; photosynthetic conversion of solar radiation produced food for people, feed for animals, recyclable wastes for the replenishment of soil fertility, as well as wood (often turned into charcoal) for smelting metals needed to make simple farm tools. But the renewability of traditional farming was no guarantee of its sustainability. In many regions poor agronomic practices gradually depleted soil fertility or caused excessive soil erosion or desertification. These changes brought lower yields or even the abandonment of cultivation. But in most regions traditional farming progressed from extensive to relatively, or even highly, intensive modes of cultivation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Except for small-scale cultivation of tubers (above all cassava) in the tropics and the Inca’s reliance on potatoes, all of the Old World’s traditional agricultures, as well as plowless Mesoamerican societies, shared their dependence on cereal grains. Cereal cultivation was supplemented by legumes, tubers and oil, fiber and, in some agricultures, also feed crops. After the domestication of draft animals the traditional crop cycles always started with plowing. Primitive wooden implements were used for millennia before the introduction of metal moldboard plows, 2000 years ago in China, but only some 17 centuries later in Europe. Plowing was followed by harrowing and by manual seeding. Harvesting also remained manual (sickles, scythes) until the introduction of grain reapers before the middle of the 19th century. Wheat cultivars had diffused worldwide from the Near East, rice from Southeast Asia, corn from Mesoamerica and millets from China.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Continuous primacy of grains in crop cultivation is due to the combination of their relatively high yields (two or three times higher than legume harvests), good nutritional value (high in filling, easily digestible carbohydrates, moderately rich in proteins), relatively high energy density at maturity (at 13–15 MJ/kg roughly five times higher than for tubers), and low moisture content ( 14%) suitable for long-term storage. Dominance of a particular species has been largely a matter of environmental conditions and taste preferences. Without understanding the nutritional rationale for their actions all traditional agricultures combined the cultivation of cereal and legume grains thus assuring complete amino acid supply in largely vegetarian diets. The Chinese planted soybeans, beans, peas, and peanuts to supplement millets, wheat and rice. In India protein from lentils, peas, and chickpeas enriched wheat and rice. In Europe the preferred combinations included peas and beans with wheats, barley, oats, and rye, in West Africa peanuts and cowpeas with millets, and in the New World corn and beans. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The principal means of agricultural intensification included more widespread and more efficient use of draft animals, increasing fertilization and regular crop rotations, more frequent irrigation in arid regions, and multicropping in the places where cli-mate could support more than a single crop per year. The use of draft animals (horses, mules, oxen, water buffaloes, camels, donkeys) eliminated the most exhaustive field work and it also sped up considerably many farmyard tasks (threshing, oil pressing), improved the quality of plowing (and later also of seeding), allowed for drawing of water from deeper wells for irrigation. The introduction of collar harness, invented in China about two millennia ago, iron horseshoes, and heavier animal breeds made field work more efficient (Smil, 1994). Feeding larger numbers of these animals eventually required further intensification to produce requisite feed crops. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Irrigation and fertilization moderated, if not altogether removed, the two key constraints on crop productivity, shortages of water and nutrients. Unaided gravity irrigation could not work on plains and in river valleys with minimal stream gradients; the invention and introduction of a variety of simple mechanical, animal- and people-driven water-lifting devices (mostly in the Middle East and China) solved this challenge (Molenaar, 1956). Fertilization involved recycling of crop residues and increasingly intensive applications of animal and human wastes. Extensive practices used no manure, whereas peak manuring rates in the 19th century Netherlands and in the most productive provinces in China surpassed 20 t/ha. Green manuring, cultivation of leguminous cover crops (clovers, vetches) which were then plowed under, was widely used in Europe ever since ancient Greece and Rome, and it has also been widely employed in east Asia (Smil, 2001). Even so, nutrient deficiencies commonly limited traditional crop productivity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Growing of a greater variety of crops lowered the risk of total harvest failure, discouraged the establishment of persistent pests, reduced erosion, and maintained better soil properties. Crop rotations were chosen to fit climatic and soil conditions and dietary preferences. In poor societies they could substantially improve food self-sufficiency and food security at the local level. Traditional varieties of crops and their rotation schemes were enormous. For example, Buck’s (1937) survey of Chinese farming counted nearly 550 different cropping systems in 168 localities. The adoption of new crops – most notably the post-1500 introductions of such New World staple as corn and potatoes and such versatile vegetables as tomatoes and peppers – had an enormous impact on food production throughout the world. In spite of these innovations preindustrial agricultures brought only very limited improvements in average harvests. For example, European wheat yields, except in the Netherlands and the UK, did not begin to rise decisively before the last decade of the 19th century (Smil, 1994). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Traditional farming also provided no more than basic subsistence diets for most of the people. Even during fairly prosperous times typical peasant diets, although more than adequate in terms of total food energy, were highly monotonous and not very palatable. In large parts of Europe bread (mostly dark, and in northern regions with little or no wheat our), coarse grains (oats, barley, buckwheat), turnips, cabbage, and later potatoes, were the everyday staples. Typical rural Asian diets were, if anything, even more dominated by rice or coarse grain (millet, buckwheat). In many cases traditional peasant diets also contained less animal protein than did the earlier intakes with higher consumption of wild animals, birds, and aquatic species. This qualitative decline was not offset by a more equitable availability of basic foodstuffs: major consumption inequalities, both regional and socioeconomic, persisted until the 19th century. The majority of people in all traditional farming society had to live on food supplies that were below the level required for a healthy and vigorous life and different kinds of malnutrition were common. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Documentary and anthropometric evidence does not demonstrate any consistent upward trend in per capita food supply across the millennia of traditional farming. Regardless of the historical period, environmental setting and prevailing mode of cropping and intensification, no traditional agriculture could consistently produce enough food to eliminate extensive malnutrition. More importantly, no preindustrial agriculture could prevent recurrent famines. Droughts and oods were the most common natural triggers, and as a recent study demonstrates these natural disasters often represented the worst imaginable climatic teleconnections arising from the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) whose effects are felt far beyond the Pacific realm (Davis, 2001). The combined (and never to be accurately quantified) toll of large-scale famines that repeatedly swept late 19th century India and China, and that also severely affected parts of Africa and Brazil, amounted to tens of millions of casualties. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 45.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In China in the 1920s peasants recalled an average of three crop failures brought by such disasters within their lifetime that were serious enough to cause famines (Buck, 1937). Some famines were so devastating that they remained in collective memory for generations and led to major social, economic and agronomic changes: the famous collapse of Phytophthora-infested Irish potato crops between 1845 and 1852, or the great Indian drought-induced famine of 1876–79. The world’s most devastating famine, in China between 1958 and 1961, was only secondarily a matter of drought; the primary causes lie in the delusionary Maoist policies (Smil, 1999a).</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-68086558185404843682011-11-19T03:24:00.000-08:002012-02-07T20:49:58.333-08:00Modern farming<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">New energy sources and three intertwined strands of innovation explain most of the success of modern farming. In contrast to traditional agriculture's, nonrenewable fossil fuels and electricity are essential inputs in modern farming. They are needed to build and operate agriculture machinery whose nearly universal adoption mechanized virtually all field and crop-processing tasks. The second key innovation is the use of fossil energies and electricity to extract and synthesize fertilizers and pesticides. The third key advance was to develop and diffuse new crop varieties responsive to higher inputs of water and nutrients. These innovations brought higher and more reliable yields, they displaced draft animals in all rich countries and greatly reduced their importance in the poor ones. The replacement of muscles by internal combustion engines and electric motors and the substitution of organic recycling by inorganic fertilizers have drastically cut labor needs in agriculture and led to huge declines in rural populations and to the worldwide rise of urbanization. For example, in the US rural labor fell from more than 60% of the total workforce in 1850 to less than 40% in 1900, 15% in 1950, and a mere 2% since 1975 (US Bureau of the Census, 1975).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Fertilizers made the earliest, and also the greatest, difference. The use of chemically treated phosphates became common after the discoveries of new rock deposits in Florida in 1888, and in Morocco in 1913. After 1850 nitrogen from Chilean nitrates, supplemented later by the recovery of ammonium sulfate from coking ovens, provided the first inorganic alternative to organic recycling. The nitrogen barrier was finally bro-ken by the invention of ammonia synthesis from its elements by Fritz Haber and the sub-sequent rapid commercialization of the process by Carl Bosch (Smil, 2001). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This invention allowed, for the first time in history, to optimize nitrogen inputs on large scale. Modern civilization is now critically dependent on the Haber–Bosch synthesis of ammonia. Recent global applications of nitrogen fertilizers to field crops – and also to permanent grasslands and tree (orchard, palm) and shrub (coffee, tea) plantations – have been in excess of 80 million tonnes (Mt) N/year, mostly in the form of urea (IFA, 2001; Fig. 3.2). The process currently provides the means of survival for about 40% of the world’s population. Only half as many people as are alive today could be supplied.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">100</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">90</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">80</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">70</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">60</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">50</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">40</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">30</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">20</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">10</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">0</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Figure 3.2</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Post-1950 growth of nitrogen fertilizer production.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">By traditional cultivation lacking any synthetic fertilizers and producing very basic, and overwhelmingly vegetarian, diets; and prefertilizer farming could provide today’s average diets to only about 40% of the existing population (Smil, 2001). Western nations, using most of their crop production for feed, could easily reduce their dependence on synthetic nitrogen by lowering their high meat consumption. Populous poor countries, where all but a small share of grain is eaten directly, do not have that option. Most notably, synthetic nitrogen provides about 75% of all inputs in China. With some 75% of the country’s protein supplied by crops, more than half of all nitrogen in China’s food comes from synthetic fertilizers. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In addition to nitrogen the world’s crops now receive also close to 15 Mt of phosphorus, and about 18 Mt of potassium a year (IFA, 2001). This massive use of fertilizers has been accompanied by the expanding use of herbicides used to control weeds, and pesticides to lessen insect and fungal infestations. Pesticide use has often been much maligned and many of these chemicals, especially following improper applications, undoubtedly leave undesirable residues in harvested products, but their use has helped to reduce the still excessively large preharvest losses. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Farming mechanization was first accomplished in the US and Canada. Its most obvious consequence was the precipitous decline in agricultural labor requirements. For example, in 1850 an average hectare of the US wheat needed about 100 hours of labor; by 1900 the rate was less than 40 hours/ha, and 50 years later it sank below 2 hours/ha (US Bureau of the Census, 1975). Until the 1950s agricultural mechanization proceeded much more slowly in Europe, and in the populous countries of Asia and Latin America it really started only during the 1960s. Today’s agriculture operates with more than 26 million tractors of which about 7 million are in developing countries (FAO, 2001). Mechanization also completely transformed crop processing tasks (threshing, oil pressing, etc.) and fuel and electric pumps greatly extended field irrigation. The global extent of crop irrigation more than quintupled between 1900 and 2000, from less than 50 to more than 270 million hectares, or from less than 5% to about 19% of the world’s harvested cropland (FAO, 2001). Half of this area is irrigated with pumped water, and about 70% is in Asia. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The key attribute common to all new high-yielding varieties (HYV) is their higher harvest index, that is the redistribution of photosynthate from stalks and stems to harvested grain or roots. Straw:grain ratio of wheat or rice was commonly above 2:1 in traditional cultivars, whereas today’s typical ratio is just 1:1 (Smil, 1999b). HYVs receiving adequate fertilization, irrigation, and protection against pests did responded with much increased yields. This combination of new agronomic practices, introduced during the 1960s, became widely known as the Green Revolution and the term is not a misnomer as the gains rose very rapidly after the introduction of these rewarding, but energy-intensive, measures. Higher reliance on intensively cultivated grain monocultures, narrowing of the genetic base in cropping and environmental impacts of agricultural chemicals have been the most discussed worrisome consequence of this innovation, but all of these concerns can be addressed by better agronomic practices (Smil, 2000). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Aggregate achievements of modern farming have been impressive. Between 1900 and 2000 the world’s cultivated area expanded by about one-third, but the global crop </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">3.5</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">3.0</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">2.5</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">2.0</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">1.5</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">1.0</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">1950</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">1960</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">1970</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">1980</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">1990</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">2000</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Figure 3.3</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Post-1950 growth of average cereal grain yields epitomizing the rising productivity of modern</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">farming (plotted from data in FAO, 2001) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Harvest rose nearly six fold. This was because of a more than fourfold increase of ave-rage crop yields made possible by a more than 80-fold increase of energy inputs to field farming (Smil, 2000). But even though the global mean harvest of all cereals more than doubled between 1950 and 2000 (Fig. 3.3), there are still large gaps between average yields and best (not record) harvests (FAO, 2001). Global corn harvest aver-ages just over 4 t/ha but farmers in Iowa are bringing in close to 10 t/ha. Average wheat yield (spring and winter varieties) is 2.7 t/ha but even national averages in the UK, the Netherlands or Denmark Western are more than 8 t/ha today. Extensive diffusion of HYV of rice raised the global mean yield to almost 4t/ha, whereas Japan or China’s Jiangsu average in excess of 6t/ha. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Higher cereal and tuber yields freed more agricultural land for no staple species, above all for oil and sugar crops. Higher cereal yields have also allowed for more and more efficient animal feeding in rich countries where the abundance of meat and dairy products has made high-protein diets much more affordable. HYVs also raised the food output of many developing countries above subsistence minima. However, a substantial gap still divides the typical agricultural performances of rich and poor countries, and, given the far greater social inequalities in the latter group, this production disparity translates readily into continuing large-scale presence of malnutrition in scores of African, Asian, and Latin American countries.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com1United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-74867614151795866262011-11-11T03:23:00.000-08:002012-02-07T21:50:15.230-08:00Current food production and supply & Global food production<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: orange; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Current food production and supply</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A word of caution first: only a minority of food production and consumption figures readily accessible in FAO databases and widely used in assessments of global food availability and needs is derived from the best available national statistics which may themselves contain many inaccuracies even when prepared by the most advanced statistical services of developed countries. Although some of the developing countries (notably China and India) have massive statistical bureaucracies and issue a great number of regular reports many of their numbers are known to be highly inaccurate. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">For example, for many years Chinese official statistics listed less than 100 million hectares (Mha) as the total of the country’s cultivated land (about 95 Mha until 2000) although many people in Beijing bureaucracy and some foreign experts knew that total was vastly undervalued. China now admits to having 130 Mha of cultivated land (National Bureau of Statistics, 2000) and the best remote sensing studies based on classified US information indicate 140, or even 150Mha (Smil, 1999c). This change means, of course, that every official yield figure for the past 20 years is inaccurate. And, obviously, countries with protracted civil wars (several in Africa, Colombia) or with a disintegrating central government (Indonesia) are in no position to collect and publish any reliable agricultural statistics. Given these realities it is not surprising that most of the numbers for most of the developing nations that appear in FAO databases are just the best expert estimates made in the organization’s Rome headquarters (FAO, 2001). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">These realities mean that both exaggerations and underestimates are common and that often the resulting numbers may not be accurate re ections of the actual situation but are best used in order to derive fair approximations of the current state of agricultural affairs. It should also be noted that according to the FAO developed countries numbered 1.3 billion people in the year 2000, the developing ones 4.7 billion, a division slightly different from that used by the UN’s population experts (UN, 2001). These realities should be kept in mind when considering the following brief review of current food output and availability.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: orange; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Global food production</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Today’s food producers fall mostly into four uneven categories. Several thousand large agribusiness companies, most of them in North America and Europe, control extensive areas of food and feed crops and highly concentrated meat production in giant feedlots. Their production goes directly to large-scale food processors or is destined for export. Several million highly mechanized family-owned farms in af uent countries rely on intensive practices to achieve high crop and animal productivity. Tens of millions of the most successful farmers in the most productive agricultural regions of many developing countries (e.g., China’s Jiangsu and Guangdong or India’s Punjab) use generally high levels of the best locally available inputs in order to pro-duce food beyond their family’s and region’s need. And hundreds of millions of subsistence peasants, either landless or cultivating small amounts of often inferior land, use inadequate inputs, or no modern means of production at all, to grow barely enough food for their own families. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Cereal grains continue to dominate the global crop harvest. Their annual output is now just above 2 billion tonnes. Developing countries produce nearly 60% of all grain, with twice as much rice as wheat (about 570 vs. 270 Mt in 2000), but in per capita terms their output (about 260 kg/year) is only about 40% of the developed countries mean (660 kg/year). Most of the poor world’s grain (more than 85%) is eaten directly, whereas most of the rich world’s grain (more than 60% during the late 1990s) is fed to animals. Consequently, actual per capita supply of processed food cereals is still about 25% higher in developing countries (165 vs. 130 kg/year), re ecting simpler diets dominated by grain staples. Not surprisingly, rich countries enjoy even higher per capita disparities in production of nonstaple crops, with the differences being particularly large for sugar (30 vs. 15 kg/year) and meat (almost 80 vs. 25 kg). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Per capita consumption of legumes has been declining for several generations in every country where pulses previously played a critical nutritional role. Only India’s annual per capita consumption of legumes remains above 10 kg/year (FAO, 2001). In contrast, no other crop diffusion in agricultural history has been as rapid and as economically far-reaching as the cultivation of soybeans for feed. US soybean plant-ings rose from a few thousand hectares in the early 1930s to more than 20 Mha since the early 1970s, and they now produce more than 50Mt/year. Brazilian soybean production rose even faster, from a negligible total in the early 1960s to more than 20Mt by the early 1990s. These two countries now produce two-thirds of the global soybean harvest, virtually all of it for animal feed. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Rising af uence combined with concerns about healthy diets has resulted in a steady growth of fruit production. Global fruit output has tripled since 1950, but this does not convey the unprecedented variety of fruits, including many tropical imports as well as winter shipments of subtropical and temperate species from the southern hemisphere, that are now available virtually year-round in all rich countries. The trend of rising fruit production recently has been most obvious in rapidly modernizing China where fruit harvests (now also increasingly for export) rose more than 10-fold (from less than 7 to more than 70 Mt) between 1980 and 2000 (National Bureau of Statistics, 2000). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">With global annual output of nearly 500Mt cow’s milk is the most important animal food. Annual output of all kinds of milk amounts to about 570 Mt. Per capita avail-abilities of dairy products are large in North America and Western Europe (in excess of 250kg/year) and negligible in traditionally nonmilking societies of East Asia. Pork, with about 80 Mt/year and rising, is by far the most important meat worldwide, with China and the US slaughtering the largest number of animals. Total meat output, including poultry, is now over 200 Mt a year, prorating to almost 80 kg/capita in rich countries and to about 25 kg/capita in the poor world. Poultry production (near 60 Mt/year) is now ahead of the combined beef and veal output and it will continue to rise. Consumption of hen eggs is now at more than 40Mt a year, and recent rapid growth of aquaculture (its combined freshwater and marine output is now close to 30Mt a year, equal to nearly a quarter of ocean catch) has put cultured fish, crustaceans, and mollusks ahead of mutton. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">After a period of decline and stagnation the global marine catch began rising once more during the mid-1990s and is now close to 100 Mt/year but major increases are highly unlikely. A conservative assessment of the global marine potential concluded that by 1996 the world ocean was being fully fished, with about 60% of some 200 major marine fish resources being either overexploited or at the peak of their sustainable harvest (FAO, 1997). Consequently, if long-term marine catches were to be kept at around 100 Mt a year then 50 years from now the population growth would cut per capita fish supply by more than half compared to the late 1990s level. The importance of this harvest is due to its nutritional quality. During the late 1990s the world’s aver-age per capita supply of some 14 kg of marine species contained only a few percent of all available food energy, but it supplied about one-sixth of all animal protein. More importantly, aquatic species provide more than a third of animal protein to at least 200 million people, mostly in east and southeast Asia (FAO, 2001).</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-72258181027987344502011-11-03T03:21:00.000-07:002012-02-07T20:46:54.039-08:00Food supply<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The world’s recent edible crop harvests prorate to about 4700 kcal/day per capita, but nearly half of the cereal production, worth about 1700 kcal/day, is fed to animals, and postharvest crop losses amount to some 600 kcal/day (Smil, 2000). This leaves about 2400 kcal/day of plant food and with some 400 kcal/day from animal foods (including aquatic products) the average per capita availability adds up to roughly 2800 kcal/day, well above a generous estimate of average needs of 2200 kcal/capita. Similarly, the world’s mean daily protein supply of 75 g/capita is well above the needed minimum. An egalitarian global civilization would thus have no problems with adequate nutrition. Equitable distribution of available food among the planet’s more than 6 billion people would provide enough protein even if the global food harvests were to be some 10% lower than they are today.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> In the real world these adequate global means hide, as do other global averages, large inter- and intranational differences. All Western nations enjoy uniformly high per capita food availabilities averaging about 3200 kcal/day. Their mean per capita supply of dietary protein is about 100 g/day, including about 55 g from animal foods. No elaborate calculations are needed to conclude that the average per capita food supply is more than adequate in all af uent countries. Because the actual requirements of mostly sedentary populations are no more than 2000–2200 kcal/day it is no exaggeration to label the resulting food surpluses (at least 1000–1200 kcal/day and up to 1600 kcal/day) as obscene. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">After all, even when leaving aside the large energy and protein losses in animal feeding, at least 30% of all food available at the retail level in Western societies is wasted! Average Western diets in general, and the North American one in particular, also contain excessive amount of lipids, which now supply 30–40% of all food energy compared to the average of less than 20% in developing countries and to shares below 15% in the poorest societies (FAO, 2001). Surfeits of food energy and lipids are the two key nutritional factors implicated in the increase of obesity and diabetes and in a high frequency of cardiovascular disease (see Chapters 9–11). Fortification of many foodstuffs (from our to juices) with vitamins and minerals and a fashionable use of dietary supplements (including recurrent megadose manias) by increasingly health-conscious segments of the aging population would suggest that there are very few micronutrient deficiencies. This is, unfortunately, not true as clinical and biochemical studies in the US show that intakes of calcium, iron, and zinc are not adequate in some groups (Pennington, 1996).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Given the obviously high incidence of overweight and obesity it is not surprising that hunger and malnutrition in af uent nations have received so little attention, but their extent is far from negligible (Riches, 1997). Poppendieck’s (1997) estimates that 22–30 million Americans cannot afford to buy enough food to maintain good health have been questioned, but even the most conservative estimates acknowledge that 10–20 million poor Americans could not feed themselves adequately without assistance, and that far from all of them are actually receiving it. The coexistence of undernutrition and widespread obesity is thus one of the most peculiar features of America’s current nutritional situation. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Japan, which is highly dependent on food imports, is the only high-income country with per capita food supply below 3000kcal/day (the rate has been steady at about 2900 kcal/day for nearly two decades). Specific features of the country’s food con- sumption include the already noted world’s highest per capita intake of aquatic products, exceptionally high intakes of soybeans (eaten mostly as beancurd), and very low con-sumption of sugar. Average food availability in China is now almost as high as in Japan (close to 2800kcal/day), but in spite of impressive post-1980 diversification (Fig. 3.4) its variety and quality is still much lower. Moreover, unlike in a highly egalitarian Japan, China’s mean hides large differences between coastal and interior provinces.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> India and Indonesia in the late 1990s were, respectively, at about 2400 and 2600 kcal/day. This would have provided adequate nutrition for everybody only if the two countries had a perfectly egalitarian access to food; in reality, highly skewed income distribution makes India the country with the largest number of undernour-ished people (FAO, 2000). Many sub-Saharan African countries average less than2200 kcal/day, some even less than 2000 kcal/day, and these obviously inadequate food supplies are re ected in the world’s shortest life expectancies at birth. Even when adequate in terms of total energy and protein, typical diets in most developing coun-tries are monotonous. And, unlike in af uent nations where nearly all traces of sea-sonal food supply have been erased by international trade, diets in many poor countries still strongly re ect the seasonality of plant harvests or fish catches.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">200</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 99.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Grain</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">175</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">150</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 310.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">50</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 310.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Meat</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 153.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">25 Fruit</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 3.25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Aquatic products</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">0</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">1970 1980 1990 1999</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Figure 3.4</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Dramatic changes in China’s average per capita food supply brought by Deng Xiaoping’s post-1980 economic reforms exemplify a rapid dietary transition in a modernizing country. Based on data from State Statistical Bureau (1980–2000); these figures exaggerate actual meat consumption (see the text for details).</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-74134236188285297122011-10-28T03:21:00.000-07:002012-02-07T21:53:28.619-08:00Malnutrition in the developing world & Future food needs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Malnutrition in the developing world</span></b></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Food deficits, regardless of whether they are on national, local or individual level, or if they range from marginal to crippling, are rarely caused by absolute physical short-ages. Such cases arise repeatedly only as a result of protracted civil wars (recently in Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia, and Sudan) and temporarily as an aftermath of major natural catastrophes. Chronic undernutrition and malnutri-tion result from inadequate individual or group access to food that is strongly related to social status and income. This conclusion is true for both the richest as well as the poorest countries.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">FAO’s past estimates of the global share of undernourished people ranged from a clearly exaggerated fraction of two-thirds in the late 1940s (an overestimate caused largely by unrealistically high assumptions regarding average protein needs) to less than one-seventh in the early 1990s. The latest estimate, for the period between 1996 and 1998, adds up to 826 million undernourished people, or about 14% of the world’s population at that time (FAO, 2000). As expected, the total is highly unevenly split, with 34 million undernourished people in the developed and 792 million people in the developing world. The highest shares of undernourished population (about 70% of the total) are now in Afghanistan and Somalia, whereas the rates for India and China are, respectively, about 20% and just above 10%. These shares make India the country with the largest number of undernourished people (just over 200 million, or roughly a quarter of the world’s total, spread pretty much all around the country), whereas China’s aggregate (mostly in the northwestern and southwestern interior provinces) is about 140 million. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">There are, of course, different degrees of undernutrition, ranging from mildly under- weight (with body mass index of 17–18.5) to severely underweight (with body mass index below 16; the normal healthy range is 18.5–25). The FAO (1996) also put the number of stunted children (with low height-for-age) at 215 million, underweight chil-dren (low weight-for-age) at 180 million, and wasted children (low weight-for-height) at 50 million. As there are many uncertainties regarding both the data and assumptions that go into the process of comparing food supplies and needs, all of these figures must be seen as informative estimates rather than as accurate totals. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt about the enormous human and socioeconomic toll of this nutritional dep-rivation. Perhaps the worst health impact arises from the well-documented effect of undernutrition on early brain development (Brown and Pollitt, 1996). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shortages of food energy and dietary protein are not the only causes of serious mal- nutrition as micronutrient deficiencies are even more common. Blindness caused by shortages of vitamin A is among the most cruel consequences of inadequate diets. The xerophthalmia syndrome includes night reversible blindness caused by lack of retinol in the eye’s retina, corneal ulceration and eventually irreversible loss of eyesight. In addition, low levels of vitamin are associated with higher mortality from respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases, and with their more severe course. FAO estimates that the total population at risk is well over half a billion, that there are about 40 million preschool children with vitamin A deficiency, and that perhaps half a million of them go blind annually (FAO, 1996).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Some micronutrient deficiencies have environmental origins. The World Health Organization estimated that 1.6 billion people, or more than a quarter of the world’s population, have some degree of iodine deficiency (WHO, 1993). Estimates of the total number of people with goiter, the condition almost always associated with some mental impairment, are as high as 600 million (Lamberg, 1993). WHO also credits iodine deficiencies during pregnancy with at least 25 million seriously brain-damaged children and nearly six millions cretins, whose severe mental retardation is combined with hearing loss or mutism and abnormal body movements. As for the economic impact, Arcand (2000) concluded that if the sub-Saharan countries with average dietary supply below the minimum requirement in 1960 had eliminated hunger by raising the average per capita food availability to nearly 2800 kcal/day (i.e., essentially China’s current mean) their per capita GDP in 1990 could have been as much as $3500 rather than the actual $800.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: orange; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Future food needs</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Three key factors will drive future demand for food. By far the most important is the continuing population growth throughout the developing world. Second, is the all too obvious need to close the gap between today’s inadequate food intakes that have to be endured by some 800 million people throughout the poor world and the minima com-patible with healthy and productive lives. The third factor is the further improvement of the quality of diets in poor countries (given the great existing food surplus, getting rid of nutritional inadequacies throughout the rich world should not call for any increases in production). At least three principal factors will determine the eventual outcome: the level of agricultural investment and research; the extent and tempo of dietary transitions, particularly the higher consumption of animal food in today’s developing countries; the success in making future food production more compatible with biospheric limits and services; and the fate of genetic engineering.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-60786538260458328892011-10-21T03:16:00.000-07:002012-02-07T20:45:33.353-08:00Population growth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">After decades of accelerating growth the global rate of population increase peaked at just over 2% a year during the late 1960s, and gradual declines of fertilities also speeded up the arrival of the absolute peak, at about 86 million people a year, during the latter half of the 1980s and the annual increase was down to 77 million people by the year 2000 (UN, 1998, 2001). As a result population projections issued during the 1990s had repeatedly lowered the long-term global forecasts for the next 50 years. The medium version of the 1998 revision envisaged just 8.9 billion people by the year 2050, down from 9.4 billion forecast in 1996, and 9.8 billion in the 1994 revisions (UN, 1998). And the high variant in 1998 was well below 12 billion people by the year 2050, in line with increasing indications that yet another doubling of human population to 12 billion people is unlikely (Lutzet al., 2001).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">12</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 301.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">11 High</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 301.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">10 Medium</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">9</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 301.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">8 Low</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">7</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">6</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">5</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">4</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">3</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">2</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">1</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">0</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">1950 2000 2050</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Figure 3.5</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">The UN’s latest long-term projections of global population growth (UN, 2001).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">But the latest UN (2001) projection raised its medium 2050 forecast to 9.3 billion (Fig. 3.5). The difference of some 400 million people above the 1998 forecast is explained largely by the assumption of somewhat higher fertilities for the 16 develop-ing countries whose fertility has not, so far, shown any sustained decline. There is a different kind of uncertainty concerning the rich world’s population. Without substan-tial immigration it would start declining as a whole within a few years and by the year 2050 it would be barely above one billion, 20% below its current total (as already noted, UNO’s and FAO’s definitions of developed and developing populations are not identical: they differ by about 100 million people). With continued immigration it would be more or less stable, reaching 1.8 billion in 50 years. Even then many European nations and Japan would experience substantial population declines. Russia’s case is particularly noteworthy, as it now appears that there is little chance of revers-ing its population decline brought on by economic deprivation, social disintegration and exceptionally high rates of alcoholism. As a result, Russia may have 30 million fewer people by the year 2050. By that time the US population will, most likely, approach 340 million. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Inherent uncertainties of long-range forecasting aside, there is no doubt that virtu-ally all the net population increase of the next two generations will take place in today’s developing world, and that the global population of 2050 will, most likely, be 50% larger than it is today. Moreover, most of the additional population growth of some 2.8–3.2 billion people will be concentrated in nations whose agricultural resources, although absolutely large, are already relatively limited. Brazil is the only modernizing populous country (i.e., with more than 100 million people) with abundant reserves of arable land and water (Fig. 3.6). Fifty years from now India, after adding nearly 600 million people, would have a population more than 50% larger than today and would be, with just over 1.5 billion, the world’s most populous country, with China a very close second. Three African and two Asian countries would add more than 100 million people each: Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, Congo, and Ethiopia. As a group these nations would have to increase their food harvests by two-thirds merely to maintain their existing, and in many respects inadequate, diets.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">0.5</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">0.4</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Nigeria</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 1.0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">0.3</span> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Brazil</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Pakistan</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">0.2</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 243.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> India</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 1.0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Indonesia</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">0.1</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Bangladesh China</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">0.0</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Population (million)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Figure 3.6</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Brazil and Nigeria are the only two developing countries with considerable reserves of potentially arable land; in all other populous modernizing countries future increases of food output will have to come from further intensification of cropping. Plotted from data in FAO (2001).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Only Congo and Nigeria have relatively low population density per hectare of cul-tivated farmland and large untapped agricultural potential. At the same time, the late 20th-century record of these two countries makes it hard to imagine that they will be the ones to mobilize their resources effectively and to evolve a civil society deter-mined to bring widespread economic advances. China and Indonesia are already the paragons of highly intensive cropping, and India and Pakistan are close behind. But, some poorly informed and sensationalized judgments notwithstanding (Brown, 1995), there is more hope for China’s farming than is the case with perhaps any other large populous country (Smil, 1995). As already noted, China has about 50% more farmland than has been officially acknowledged (which means that its actual average yields are substantially lower than reported) and it has many opportunities for increas- ing the productivity of its cropping (Smil, 1999c). India’s situation, though undoubt-edly highly challenging, appears to be more hopeful than the Indonesian or Pakistani prospect. As for Ethiopia, natural aridity affects large parts of its territory and already limits its food production capacity.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-43694658940792460322011-10-14T03:15:00.000-07:002012-02-07T20:44:14.929-08:00Increased demand for animal foods<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">As described in the previous section, af uence changed this consumption pattern but intakes of animal foods are badly skewed in favor of high-income populations. Industrialized nations, amounting to only a fifth of the global population total, now produce a third of hen’s eggs, two-fifths of all meat, and three-fifths of all poultry and cow’s milk. Animal foods now supply around 30% of all food energy in North America and Europe, around 20% in those East Asian countries that have reached apparent satiation levels (Japan, Taiwan) and far below 10% in the most food-deficient coun-tries of sub-Saharan Africa (FAO, 2001). This means, as already noted, that the daily food supply of rich nations now averages about 55g of meat and milk protein per capita, compared to just 20g in the developing world, and the actual gap is even larger for hundreds of millions of subsistence peasants and poor urbanites surviving on diets virtually devoid of any animal foods. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">With meat and dairy intakes being up to an order of magnitude higher in af uent nations than in many poor countries this means that extending the current per capita supply means of developed countries (i.e., above 250 kg for milk and close to 80 kg for meat) to all of today’s low income countries (i.e., to 4.7 billion people), as well as to the additional three to four billion people that will be added in those countries dur-ing the next two generations, would call for an impossibly large expansion of feed production. The three important questions are then as follows. Should such a goal be seen as being at least theoretically desirable? What are the chances that developing countries would move as rapidly, and as far, toward the af uent (Western) consump-tion pattern as their limited resources will allow? And to what extent can we improve the prevailing feeding efficiencies? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Only the first question has an easy answer. There is no need to present a massive sur-vey of current nutritional understanding or to engage in polemics on behalf of, or against, vegetarianism, a nutritional choice that most people will not consider following voluntarily in any case, or high-level carnivory. What is abundantly clear is that humans do not need high levels of animal food intakes either to lead healthy and productive lives or to achieve average population longevities in excess of 70 years, and that no other known existential benefits are predicated on consuming at least as much meat and dairy products as the developed countries do today. Moreover, as recent experiences with some consequences of animal feeding and rearing have demonstrated (European mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth epizootic leading to large-scale slaughter of cattle and sheep, and Asian bird viruses resulting in mass killings of poultry) the scale and the very nature of meat-producing enterprises may actually be a threat to human health, or at least a costly inconvenience. In contrast to these fairly indisputable conclusions the pace and the extent of dietary transition is much harder to predict.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-69123569752668554062011-10-07T03:15:00.000-07:002012-02-07T21:06:40.758-08:00Dietary patterns<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">No other factor will determine the future demand for animal foods as much as the degree of westernization of diets in developing countries in general, and in populous Asian nations in particular. Informed discussion of this prospect must start by acknowledging the fact that, in spite of broad similarities, there are substantial differ-ences in meat and fat intakes among Western countries. This means that there is no generic Western diet to which the developing countries might aspire. Although all major indicators of quality of life are very similar for all of the af uent nations of Western Europe, per capita supplies of meat differ by about 40%: Norwegians get less than 60kg/year, French almost 100kg/year (FAO, 2001). And whereas Greeks con-sume less than 5 kg of butter and lard a year per capita, the Finnish mean is close to 15 kg. Such comparisons make it clear that the European pattern, although very similar in total energy and protein intakes, spans a range of distinct categories from the Mediterranean to the Scandinavian diets.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Taking such differences into account, Seckler and Rock (1995) suggested that two different patterns of food consumption should be considered when forecasting the future composition of food intakes in developing countries. They define what they call the Western model as the daily mean supply of more than 3200 kcal/capita with more than 30% of food energy coming from animal foodstuffs. But a great deal of evidence confirms that another model – what they label the Asian–Mediterranean pattern, with overall food energy availability below 3200 kcal/capita and with animal products sup-plying less than 25% of food energy – appears to be a more powerful attractor for many developing countries. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Food balance sheets of the last two generations show that animal food intakes in the economically most successful developing countries have not been moving rapidly toward the Western consumption pattern. Egypt and Turkey have basically the same proportion of meat in their typical diets as they had 30 years ago. Japanese meat intakes have stabilized at around 40kg, as did the Malaysian average. Official output statistics would appear to put China into a different category and forecasts based on these numbers see China as a gargantuan meat-eating nation, but a closer look shows that the country will not move rapidly toward the Western attractor. China’s official output statistics, and hence also FAO food balance sheets based on them, credit the country with per capita output of about 47 kg meat in 1999, but the China Statistical Yearbook puts actual per capita purchases of urban households at 25 kg (unchanged in a decade!) and the meat consumption of rural families at less than 17 kg, up from about 13 kg in 1990 (National Bureau of Statistics, 2000). This means that the eventual doubling of average nationwide per capita meat consumption would result in a rate only marginally higher than the current value claimed by official statistics. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Forecasts of China’s future meat consumption have also been affected by simplistically extrapolating Taiwan’s experience. The island’s very high average per capita meat intake (about 80 kg) is not only the highest in Asia, it is even higher than the British mean, and its very low direct cereal consumption (less than 110 kg) is below the OECD’s mean of some 130 kg (FAO, 2001). Moreover, differences of scale between the two countries (1.2 billion vs. some 20 million of people) and the still very limited purchasing power of most of China’s peasants are two other factors militating against a further rapid rise of China’s per capita meat consumption. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Finally, it must be noted that the total consumption of meat, although still slowly rising in the US, has been declining in Europe (for example, in Germany it is down by 15% since 1980), which means that the Western pattern is actually shifting gradu-ally toward the alternative attractor. Consequently, there is a fairly high probability that tomorrow’s developing world, although definitely demanding higher animal food intakes, will not look toward yesterday’s French, Dutch, or US example. Widespread assumptions that rising disposable incomes will be readily translated into rapidly, and virtually universally, rising demand for meat may not come to pass. Whatever its actual level may be, lower than anticipated demand for animal foods would be much easier to meet, especially once a concerted commitment is made to improve the efficiency of feeding as much as practicable. But whatever the pace and the extent of coming dietary changes may be, the increasing carnivory could have a much lower demand on agricultural resources and could also result in much reduced environmental impacts if we were to feed the animals much more efficiently.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-76794197275536581972011-09-27T03:14:00.000-07:002012-02-07T21:57:15.794-08:00Feeding efficiencies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Better management of grasslands, and some of their inevitable, but undesirable, expansion in Latin America, Africa, and Asia (as nearly all new grazing land will be created through deforestation) will supply only a small fraction of future increases in meat and milk production and more than 90% of additional output of animal foods will have to come from growing more concentrate feeds, above all corn and soybeans, in direct competition with food crops. This trend has been one of the most obvious features of the 20th-century cropping. In 1900 just over 10% of the global grain harvest was consumed by animals; by 1950 the share surpassed 20% and now it is approaching 50%, with national shares ranging from nearly 70% in the USA to less than 5% in India. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">But future feeding requirements are not irrevocably determined by a given demand for animal protein. As these proteins are all of the highest quality they are mutually substitutable and long-term dietary shifts can reduce the relative, or even absolute, consumption of one kind of animal food while greatly increasing the demand for another. For example, in 1950 chicken made up less than 10% of average US per capita meat consumption, but in 2000 its share was about one-third (USDA, 1950–2001). Consequently, a future combination of animal foodstuffs that is inherently more efficient to produce can lead to substantial feed savings in comparison to the prevail-ing consumption pattern. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Milk is by far the most efficient animal food. Highly productive animals need just 1–1.1 kg of concentrate feed per kg of milk. They convert more than 30% of the total metabolizable feed energy, and 30–40% of feed protein to milk protein. Eggs come second (current best practices need less than 3 kg of feed per kg of eggs), and chicken third. Large-scale broiler production requires fewer than 5 units of concentrate feed per unit of edible tissue and feed proteins are converted into meat proteins with efficiency averaging 20%, twice as high as in pigs. Pigs grown for their lean meat can turn more than 20% of metabolizable energy into edible tissues and they need about 7.5 units of concentrate per kg of meat; pigs are also the most efficient convertors of feed energy into edible lipids which give meat its satisfying palatability.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Conversion efficiencies for beef clearly indicate the extravagant cost of that meat; feedlot-fed animals need at least 20 kg of corn and soybeans for each kg of meat, and only 5% of all fed protein is converted into protein in beef. Obviously, only those ani- mals that do not require any concentrates, i.e., raised completely by grazing, or con-suming crop-processing residues such as brans and oilseed cakes, that is digesting biomass that cannot be used by nonruminant species, can be seen as efficient users of agricultural resources. Consequently, it is difficult to imagine a less-desirable change of dietary habits than the global expansion of hamburger empires. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Aquacultured herbivorous fishes are better convertors of feed than pork or chicken. Conversion ratios (kg of feed per kg of live weight) for semi-intensively bred carp in warm waters are 1.4–1.8, and for catfish 1.4–1.6. As a smaller share of fish total mass is wasted in comparison with mammalian or bird carcasses, herbivorous fish need fewer than 2.5 kg of concentrate feed per unit of edible weight, and their protein con-version efficiency is as good as chicken (Smil, 2000). Salmon are even better protein convertors, but these carnivores need fish oils and proteins and their feeding actually results in a net protein loss. Use of concentrate feed in aquaculture of herbivorous species is thus an excellent way of increasing global availability of animal protein and the FAO believes that this rapidly growing enterprise has excellent prospects.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-83043201336560073062011-09-20T03:13:00.000-07:002012-02-07T20:38:29.200-08:00Investing in agriculture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">For most people the idea of investing in agriculture conjures the images of extending credit to farmers or building new irrigation schemes but the most important investments needed to assure high agricultural productivity are in maintaining viable agroecosys-tems. Although modern agriculture has eliminated many environmental limits and insulated itself from many environmental interferences through fertilization, irrigation, use of pesticides and breeding of better cultivars, crop production remains embedded within the dynamic complexities of the living biosphere and depends critically on reli-able provision of many natural services and on the maintenance of essential ecosystem structures. These necessities range from having sufficiently friable soils containing large amounts of organic matter and protected against excessive erosion to promoting practices that will minimize nutrient losses from fertilizer applications and increase water use efficiencies in irrigation as much as practicable.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Achieving these goals is a matter of complex management that can be effective only when we use the best understanding of how agroecosystems operate. For example, the first necessity (maintaining desirable soil structure) requires the use of appropri-ate tillage methods (including minimum tillage practices), recycling of crop residues and animal wastes, regular crop rotations, and where possible also planting of legu-minous cover crops (Agassi, 1995). Without these measures soil bacteria and inverte-brates could not thrive, high organic matter content able to maintain soil structure would decline, soil would not be able to hold moisture and would be prone to erosion losses that would eventually lower its productivity. Similarly, reducing nutrient losses requires measures ranging from repeated soil and plant testing and split applications of fertilizers to selecting appropriate cultivars and regular planting of cover crops (Smil, 2001). These practices require a great deal of understanding and ongoing per-sonal commitment by individual farmers but most of them now rest on fairly well-understood principles.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> In contrast, new methods of more productive farming will require further inten-sification of agricultural research and technical innovation. Not surprisingly, many observers of the current agricultural situation argue for substantially increased public support of basic and applied agricultural research (Pinstrup-Andersen, 2001), and there is no shortage of studies to show the efficacy of this approach. For example, Huang and Rozelle (1996) showed that innovation accounted for almost all of the growth in agricultural productivity in China during the latter half of the 1980s and in the early 1990s. Avery (1997) stressed that only further intensification of crop produc-tion can save the remaining tropical rainforests, and hence most of the world’s existing biodiversity, from eventual destruction. Virtually every assessment of future agricul-tural needs prepared by the FAO or by specialized crop research centers (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, International Rice Research Institute) notes that returns to public investments in agricultural research and extension are very high and urges that future funding should be increased. In spite of this well-proven reality research funding remains inadequate throughout the developing world. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Given this state of affairs it is even more worrisome that the developing world may not be able to take full benefit of one of the most important scientific advances of the past generation, our increasingly effective ability to confer desirable traits on plants and animals by means of genetic engineering. Of course, an argument could be made that the rich countries, with their obscene surplus of food, have really no need to use arcane techniques in order to further boost their crop and animal production. But a common view that genetic engineering is a tool of multinational companies geared toward the rich world’s markets and that developing countries have no chance to benefit from biotechnology is wrong. As Wambugu (2001) argues, small-scale farmers have profited by using hybrid seeds and transgenic seeds simply add more value to these hybrids. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This is a very important point that needs constant stressing to scientifically illiterate critics. All but a few of our currently planted crops are products of extensive breeding modifications and today’s world could not feed itself without using these hybrid and high-yielding cultivars. Traditional breeding has made a fundamental difference to the agricultural productivity of the 20th century; current harvests would be impossible without hybrid corn (introduced in the 1930s), HYV of rice and wheat (first released during the 1960s) and hybrid rice (developed in China during the 1970s). Hybrid corn, the planting of which began slowly in Iowa in the early 1930s, has transformed US corn harvests since World War II and is now benefiting both small- and large-scale corn producers throughout the developing world. Hybrid rice, which can boost aver- age yields by 15–20%, has been finally adapted to tropical climates and is now being accepted throughout Asia (Virmani et al., 1996). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Genetic engineering is thus only the latest, and the most powerful, tool of agricultural innovation. Admittedly, it is also a tool with considerable potential for adverse effects and unwanted complications but this reality should not be the reason for banning the effort and walking away from the prospect of immense future benefits. After all, this combination of risks and benefits is nothing unique to genetic engineering. Modern society constantly confronts such dilemmas and has found ways to deal with them. Perhaps the most apposite example is that of drug companies and the billions of users of prescription medicines who must weigh the benefits against a range of potentially even fatal side effects. Careful research and testing and responsible regulation are the answers, not a ban on the drugs. Genetic engineering alone will not solve food short- ages that are now experienced by hundreds of millions of people but it could become the most powerful tool in that quest. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I will note just a few of the recent bioengineering advances whose potential for producing larger and better harvests or more desirable animals is self-evident.</span> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Broader-leafed rice can deprive weeds of sunlight, thus reducing the need for apply-ing herbicides or for laborious weeding. Rice with higher vitamin A and iron content can be the most cost-effective, as well as the most practical, way to end two of the most persistent micronutrient deficiencies in rice-eating countries. Millions of poor tropical families cultivating sweet potatoes in their fields and kitchen gardens would benefit from a transgenic cultivar resistant to feathery mottle virus which can reduce the yields by up to 80% (Wambugu, 2001). And, to give perhaps the most impressive example from animal farming, transgenic pigs able to produce phytase (the enzyme needed to digest phytate phosphorus in their feed) in their saliva will void manure with phosphorus content reduced by up to 75% (Goloran et al., 2001). This impres- sive achievement will reduce one of the principal causes of aquatic eutrophication, algal growth and fish kills in affected waters. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Seeing genetic engineering as the solution to the world’s food problems would be naïve. Refusing to proceed with careful research and regulated applications might be one of the most shortsighted human choices ever made as the technique has potential not only for increased and improved food production but also for enhanced environ-mental protection. Well-conceived bioengineering research, together with the stress on environmentally sound farming and higher efficiency in the use of all farm inputs, should be one of the key ingredients with which to build greater food security for tomorrow’s developing world.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-88502189548987131042011-09-13T03:11:00.000-07:002012-02-07T21:07:35.769-08:00Can the challenges of poverty, sustainable consumption and good health governance be addressed in an era of globalization?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: blue; text-align: center;"><i style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Tim Lang</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The nutrition transition has taken different characteristics in various developing countries, cultures, and historical eras. Huge policy challenges arise. Is the nutrition transition inevitable? Can its patterns be altered? What policies minimize its adverse health outcomes most effectively? This chapter, while perhaps adding further complexity to an already difficult issue, outlines four policy elements that ought to inform and be part of the debate about the nutrition transition. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The first element relates to the interaction between food and nutrition and the environment – the issue of sustainable consumption. The second is social inequality – the extent of poverty and food insecurity. The third is governance, the notion that, if human policy “frames” nutrition, then human forces should themselves be shaped to do this equitably, responsibly, and effectively. The English word “governance” refers not just to what governments do, but also to the actions of other powerful social forces, such as private business. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The last element is culture, a key and often a missing component in the nutrition transition debate. Food culture is the “pull” in the transformation of tastes, just as marketing and corporate reach are the “push”.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-89901169454912869132011-09-02T03:10:00.000-07:002012-02-08T06:40:26.707-08:00Globalization and the nutrition transition<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj93UKDMsVlbn2TGn2LNneN321lc-EFv_gkMfBxTDBBJH7H4Y8Nv5lp9h0IBL0lnuajM1XGosO_cbbPOTIlEa9hosKtMVHLYLcHzVVVFcdD6arY3o8WMm-kgpFwk0OzzZwpisCY7TY0wgzr/s1600/4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj93UKDMsVlbn2TGn2LNneN321lc-EFv_gkMfBxTDBBJH7H4Y8Nv5lp9h0IBL0lnuajM1XGosO_cbbPOTIlEa9hosKtMVHLYLcHzVVVFcdD6arY3o8WMm-kgpFwk0OzzZwpisCY7TY0wgzr/s1600/4.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A distinction must be made between the nutrition transition and the wider socioeconomic process of globalization, which refers to the process by which goods, people, and ideas spread throughout the world. The subject has been the source of much excitement in sociological and political circles recently, to which the topic of food can add a suitably gentle corrective. Globalization of food is, of course, nothing new. Plants have moved and been moved around the globe for centuries. Today, many are grown</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Table 4.1</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Top economic countries and corporations, 2001 (from Davidson, 2001)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The richest Ranking by country Country or corporation Food role GDP or revenue 1999 player ranking or corporation (millions of US$)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1 1 United States 9152 098</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">2 2 Japan 4346 922</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">3 3 Germany 2111 940</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">4 4 United Kingdom 1441 787</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">5 5 France 1432 323</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">6 6 Italy 1170 971</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">7 7 China 989 465</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">8 8 Brazil 751 505</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">9 9 Canada 634 898</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">10 10 Spain 595 927</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 1.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">23 1 General Motors 176558</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">25 2 Wal-Mart Stores Retailer 166 809</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">26 3 Exxon Mobil 163 881</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">27 4 Ford Motor 162 558</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">28 5 Daimler-Chrysler 159 986</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">32 27 Indonesia 142 511</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">33 28 Saudi Arabia 139 383</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">34 29 South Africa 131 127</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">38 6 Mitsui 118 555</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">39 7 Mitsubishi 117 766</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">40 8 Toyota Motor 115 671</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">41 33 Portugal 113716</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">42 9 General Electric 111 630</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">44 10 Itochu 109 069</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">45 11 Royal Dutch/Shell Retailer 105 366</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 2.75in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> Group</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">46 35 Venezuela, RB 102222</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">47 36 Israel 100840</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">48 12 Sumitomo 95 701</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">57 17 BP Amoco Retailer 83 566</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">72 29 Philip Morris Processor 61 751 </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; tab-stops: 2.75in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> and tobacco</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">75 44 Pakistan 58154</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">88 41 Nestlé Processor 49 694</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">97 46 Metro Retailer 46 664</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">99 52 Bangladesh 45961</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">100 48 Tokyo Electric Power 45 728</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">Countries are indicated in normal type; company rankings are shown in bold.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">All countries produce food; only those corporations with direct food interests are noted in this column.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">far from their site of original cultivation. The same has happened to animals: cows, poultry, pigs, sheep, and goats. What is new about current globalization is its pace, scale, and extent, primarily fueled by government and private market forces. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Table 4.1 combines World Bank figures of national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (World Bank, 2001) with estimates of corporate turnover from the Fortune 500 (Fortune, 2001). Produced by CAFOD, an international aid agency (Davidson, 2001), it seeks to measure relative economic “punch”. Of the richest 100, 48 are companies and 52 are countries. When ordered, one notes that Wal-Mart (26th), a retailer, had revenues greater than the GDP of Indonesia (32nd), Saudi Arabia (33rd) or South Africa (34th). Phillip Morris (72nd), a tobacco company which in 1998 was also the world’s largest food company, had a turnover greater than the GDP of Pakistan (75th). Nestlé (88th) had a turnover greater than the GDP of Bangladesh (99th). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The diverse reach of modern food corporations is considerable. Food companies are in discrete markets, mostly either in production or trading of raw commodities – such as Cargill, the world’s largest grain trader, a private corporation – or in value-adding industries such as food processing. Table 4.2 provides a picture of the world’s largest food global corporations. These are key framers of the food system.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-63792068827723501172011-08-30T03:10:00.000-07:002012-02-07T20:41:38.997-08:00Food policy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Food policy poses special challenges to public policy. Key features of the contemporary food system, sometimes, to the detriment of health outcomes, are a focus on</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">profits as a primary driver, value-adding, brand image, market share and “efficiency”.</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Meanwhile in political discourses, health issues are often combined or confounded</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">with safety, rather than recognized as specific population-based indicators. Con icting</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">policies are common, particularly when government subsidies undermine food policies with a potential benefit to public health. An example can be found in policies over</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">fish. Although nutritionists generally encourage consumption of fish, environmental</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">considerations urge if not caution then reduction. Whereas 5% of humanity consumes.</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">Table 4.2</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">Largest food corporations, by turnover, 1998 (from FT 500,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">Financial Times</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">, 28 January</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">1999, excepting Cargill, website: www.cargill.com)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">Sales Profits Chief products Employees</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Table 4.3 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Some features of the 20th century food revolution</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Sector Feature Example Comment</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Agriculture Labor efficiency Decline of animal power, Decline in farms, rise</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 207.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> replacement by fossil power in size of holdings</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Processing Value-adding Sugar and fruit extract added “New adulterations”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">to fermented milk</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Distribution Creation of entire new Chill systems of storage More long-distance</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 148.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> sector in modern food food transport</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">supply chains</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Retail Transfer of sales force Electronic Point of Sale Key to supermarket</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">from direct customer (EPOS) systems using efficiency and</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">contact laser scanners of “barcodes” logistics control</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Catering Bought-in ready-made Soups, gravy mixes De-skilling of cooking</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">ingredients</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Marketing Search for new niche Low calorie drinks Coexistence of niche</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">markets by use of using artificial sweeteners and mass markets;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">advertising market fragmentation</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">45% of all meat and fish, the poorest 20% consumes only 5%. North American cod banks are severely depleted and subject to fishing bans, and according to the FAO, 69% of world fish stocks are in a “dire condition”. The FAO sees the problem as the world “having too many vessels or excessive harvesting power in a growing number of fisheries,” yet governments are subsidizing the fish industry an annual $14–20 bn, equivalent to 25% of sector’s revenues (World Trade Organization, 1999). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Food production has changed dramatically over the 20th century. New products, processes (both on and off the land), distribution (supply chain management), and marketing (e.g., advertising) have had major impacts on health, environment, and culture. A spiral has occurred in which changing supply chain features have both fed and reacted to changing aspirations and food culture. Table 4.3 gives illustrations of some key features. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The food economy unfolding worldwide has some features in common. It is characterized by:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•Value-adding – the pursuit of “difference”, i.e., a feature (e.g., packaging, taste, image) to differentiate between one product and another;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•Company mergers and acquisitions leading to high levels of concentration in the food economy;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•Quality, which may be defined cosmetically (by how the food looks or can be sold);</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•Brand value – name and marketability are to market success;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•The search for new markets – or “new” to the dominant Western food companies, who desire to open previously untapped markets such as the former Soviet Union, China and India;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•Trader power – with complex supply chains, there appears to be a rule whereby whoever dominates the relationship between primary producers and processors, on the one hand, and end consumers, on the other, is sovereign</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Table 4.4</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Some policy options</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Fragmented policy Systemic solutions</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Intensification Diversification</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Cost externalization Cost internalization</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Marginalization of health Health central to economics</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Food miles More local food</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Productionism Sustainability</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Individual health Ecological public health</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Integrated policy Technical fixes</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Short term Long term</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Consumerism Citizenship</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;">Health focus mainly on food safety Policy linkage between safety, nutrition and</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt;"> sustainable food supply</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A two-tier food economy characterized by large transnational corporations with enormous power on the one hand, and a plethora of small and medium-sized enterprises restricted to local or subnational markets on the other;</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Social fragmentation – the coexistence of over- and under consumption (see Table 4.4).</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-58377705117050419172011-08-24T03:08:00.000-07:002012-02-08T06:37:10.502-08:00Food inequalities<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq9cAfLXoYykGo22zGXr2q9Q-k4pwPchGW0-4xbMAUgWcpQR5z1ONqbGYO1vFHJAThin8IkT6UuaLHjkyiuym2dRrLhm5s1wpZeYm0M_fctAVTj7bFrTb_Yo-qAV-jMWgG9uE4tEXAE0-r/s1600/3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq9cAfLXoYykGo22zGXr2q9Q-k4pwPchGW0-4xbMAUgWcpQR5z1ONqbGYO1vFHJAThin8IkT6UuaLHjkyiuym2dRrLhm5s1wpZeYm0M_fctAVTj7bFrTb_Yo-qAV-jMWgG9uE4tEXAE0-r/s1600/3.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Many health disparities are the result of differences in diet availability and intake. History suggests that food insecurity is not inevitable and that maldistribution of food is a classic illustration of the social determination of health. In both war and peace, equitable public policy can decrease infant mortality and increase overall human health. That the toll of diet-related inequalities is so sobering is a political challenge. There is, of course, some good news but 800 million children globally are undernourished and an estimated two billion people show the effects of poor diet (UNICEF, 2000). Deficiencies of both macro- and micronutrients are well documented, as is the fact that women, children, and older people are at greatest risk. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A self-perpetuating cycle of health and income inequalities re ects inequalities in housing and education, leading to greater exposure to environmental hazards such as unsafe food, and contaminated air and water. Such life hazards are associated with rapid urbanization, which can reduce rather than enhance the range of good dietary ingredients and increase the likelihood of ill-health through pollution and accidents, which in turn reduces the opportunities for income and education of children. It is the task of public policy to break such negative cycles.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> From the end of World War II, food policy on inequalities was fractured by a clash of analyses about the way forward. On one side stood those arguing for policies of national or possibly regional self-reliance. On the other stood those arguing for greater ow of trade and cross-border food security.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A key thinker in the 1940s was John Boyd Orr, who became the first Secretary General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) when it was created in 1946 (Orr, 1966). He tried to bridge the two policy camps, arguing that those that could grow food, should and those that could not, should be fed by others. The problem was that countries that needed to import food had to export hard goods, commodities, or other commercial crops to generate foreign exchange. Boyd Orr argued that countries should set “targets for tomorrow”. In today’s parlance, he argued for multilevel governance, a combination of local, national, and international targets that should work to the common good for health (Orr, 1943). The approach is worth rehearsing, not just for its historical significance, but because it attempted, over half a century ago, to address some problems in food policy that still exist today. In relation to countries such as the UK, i.e., with pockets of real deprivation amidst wealth, Boyd Orr argued as follows.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•Countries should set targets within a new global system and foster intergovernmental cooperation to help each other over good times and bad, to ease out booms and slumps in production.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•Targets should be based on nutrition and agricultural science.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•Targets should be set to achieve health. Premature death from undernutrition was inexcusable; investment in better food would yield health and economic gains and savings.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">• Agriculture should be supported to produce more. Agriculturally rich countries, such as the UK, ought to emulate the advanced agricultural economies such as the USA where targets had been set to raise production of fruit and vegetables (up by 75%), milk (up by 39%), eggs (up by 23%), etc.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">• Industry should be geared to produce tools to enable agricultural productivity to rise, e.g., new buildings, tractors, equipment.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">• Trade should be encouraged to meet the new markets. Trade would ease the over-productive capacity of some world areas and match them with underconsumption in other areas.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•International cooperation would have to follow the (proposed) UN Conference on Food and Agriculture.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">•New organizations would have to be created such as a new International Food and Agricultural Commission, National Food Boards to monitor supplies, Agricultural Marketing Boards, Commodity Boards. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This was visionary indeed and was the position Boyd Orr argued with passion in the post-war reconstruction period. But this mixed approach to food policy – part market, part state action – which was rejected by some at the time, was marginalized entirely by the 1980s. Retrospectively, the 1974 World Food Summit may be seen as the high water mark of the appeal of state-led, national policies of self-reliance. The new neo-liberal orthodoxy from the 1980s replaced this central role of the State with an emphasis on market-driven growth. In the process, the definition of food security was altered in two important ways. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Firstly, a new focus had emerged from researchers who placed more stress on subnational or local and domestic food security. They argued that countries might have an overall sufficiency of supply, when at the household or local level, there could be deficiencies; what was needed, argued the researchers, was attention to the microlevel.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Four core foci emerged (Lang et al ., 2001):</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">• sufficiency of food for an active healthy life;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">• access to food and entitlement to produce, purchase or exchange food;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">• security in the sense of the balance between vulnerability, risk and insurance;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">• time and the variability in experiencing chronic, transitory, and cyclical food insecurity. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Accompanying this focus on the micro- and household level of food security, were new macroeconomic frameworks for achieving food adequacy. According to the new position, economic goals should aim for sufficient purchasing power to ensure that citizens ate adequately. Considerations of national or regional food security would be rejected. What mattered was not how much food a nation, state or locality produced but whether the people could afford to purchase their needs on the open market. If they could not, the market needed to be opened to imports and at the same time income generation within economies needed to be maximized. This import–export model triumphed at the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">If the pursuit of food self-reliance was killed in the 1980s, the GATT buried it. However, as often happens in public policy, when a policy regime celebrates its triumph, a replacement or opposition can already be waiting in the wings. This has happened with the import–export neoliberal approach. Largely driven initially by environmental considerations, the 1990s saw the increasing articulation of new models. One might be termed appropriate localism. This position suggests that meeting environmental goals of sustainability by producing more diverse foods locally, both empowers people and protects their capacity to feed themselves (Pretty, 1998). Another position is associated with the work of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, who with Jean Dreze, has articulated a view that people experience hunger when a political culture denies them “entitlement” (Sen,1981a, 2000). Social legitimacy is a precursor to adequate food, but social legitimacy can be made or broken by policy choices. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The amazing gap between rich and poor within and between societies is well documented. There are 1.2 billion people living on US$1 per day (UNDP, 2000). Mean-while, the top 200 billionaires doubled their wealth in 1994–98 and just three of their number have more wealth than the combined Gross National Product (GNP) of all least developed countries, a total of 600 million people (UNDP, 1999). Michael Jordan, a US athlete, was paid US$20 million for endorsing Nike trainers, more than the entire workforce was paid for making them (Klein, 2000). Although our focus here is on the nutrition transition experienced by developing or recently developed countries, it is important to remember that even in rich countries, policies can determine the variation in rates of diet-related health inequalities. In the European Union, for instance, rates of diet-related ill-health vary considerably (Lang, 1999a). The UK has the worst indices and, despite being wealthy, has a disproportionate share of European Union low income (Societe Francais de Santé Publique, 2000). In the period 1979–97, inequalities in income and health widened due to macroeconomic policy choices under the Conservative Government. According to the New Labour government’s own health inquiry, the poorest decile in the UK experienced both real and relative income decline (Acheson, 1998). As in other countries with far lower incomes, the UK’s lower socioeconomic groups have a greater incidence of premature and low birthweight babies, heart disease, stroke, and some cancers in adults. Risk factors including lack of breast feeding, smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, hypertension, and poor diet are clustered in lower socioeconomic groups (James et al ., 1997).</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031857472315204866.post-9194205560656734142011-08-16T03:07:00.000-07:002012-02-08T06:35:37.119-08:00Sustainable consumption: constraint on consumerism?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU9_coSTbmZrIGeGm6_KC-9uGnzUCwg_1HOUzIVk5wBl76hDyVIBiumuNVspb3gk2Ixp9dtJtyeXakGdixNHcfTCBFa0RvBRxYW5EsZdnTtKFJWej8dr9eJ7Swj-f9aRBY3dwVFRUIqrGD/s1600/2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU9_coSTbmZrIGeGm6_KC-9uGnzUCwg_1HOUzIVk5wBl76hDyVIBiumuNVspb3gk2Ixp9dtJtyeXakGdixNHcfTCBFa0RvBRxYW5EsZdnTtKFJWej8dr9eJ7Swj-f9aRBY3dwVFRUIqrGD/s1600/2.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Over the last decades of the 20th century evidence mounted about the deleterious effect of contemporary food and agricultural policies. These include:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">• pollution and chemical contamination from pesticide (over-)use (Conway and Pretty, 1991);</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">• falling water tables from over-irrigation and intensive crop production (de Moor, 1998);</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">• drinking water quality (McMichael, 1999);</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">• loss of biodiversity (Gardner, 1996);</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">• degraded soil (Oldeman et al ., 1991; McMichael, 2001);</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">• wasteful use of land and sea (World Resources Institute, 1993). </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">There is now considerable concern in agricultural policy on whether the earth’s food infrastructure can feed populations. The Worldwatch Institute has pointed to evidence of slowing of yield increases, declining crop diversity, declining fish stocks, and the impact of climate change (Gardner and Halweil, 2000). The challenge of meeting sustainability goals is not just a matter for ecology, but also society. Key trends include urbanization, rising meat consumption and civil wars, which upset agricultural capacities. The growing debate about sustainable consumption raises additional long-term questions about the “pull” exerted by consumerism. What are the implications of continued changing consumer demands for more meat, fish and use of nonrenewable resources, such as in packaging?</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A foretaste of what could follow in the wake of the nutrition transition, if developing countries adopt the entire Western intensive approach to food production and consumption exemplified by hygienic packaging, can be appreciated by looking at what the “advanced” economies do. The global packaging industry is worth an annual $100 billion and in some developed countries, packaging accounts for between 10% and 50% of end food costs. The USA’s packaging industry manufactures 32 billon kilograms of plastic food packaging each year, and its population of 280 million people throws away 60 million plastic bottles each day, less than 3% are recycled. If the USA is a world leader in such waste, the UK with a population of 60 million also manages to use 15 million plastic bottles per day, of which less than 3% are recycled. Where does this waste go? The choice is either to bury it in landfills or to recycle it. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The European Union has now set the ambitious goal of recovering 50% of all plastic waste and of recycling half of that. But the recycling currently means that shiploads of plastic waste are taken to China for sorting by cheap labor (Vidal, 2001). Such solutions are probably unsustainable. That what is required is more than palliatives, but rather a structural rethink, is given further weight by the enormity of carbon emissions. The UK’s food, drink, and tobacco industries produce 4.5 million tons (Mt) of carbon a year, and also deposit 6 Mt of waste in landfill sites each year (DETR, 1998). A policy debate about the relative health value of packaging is urgently required. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A similar challenge for health is raised by the rapid urbanization of global populations. In policy terms, the questions are: firstly, how are the populations of cities to be fed? Secondly, who is to do it? In 1900, approximately 5% of the world’s people lived in cities with populations greater than 100 000. By the 1990s, an estimated 45% – more than 2.5 billion people – lived in large urban centers. And by 2025, that proportion is likely to be 61% of the world’s population (Howson et al ., 1998). This is likely to be accompanied by a considerable growth of the urban poor. As the population in cities continues to expand into the 21st century, the demand for food to feed urban people will grow. The FAO estimates that in a city of 10 million people, 6000 tonnes of food may need to be imported on a daily basis (FAO, 1998). By the year 2025, there will be a huge increase in the numbers of people in the south living in cities. Between 1950 and 1990, the world’s towns and cities grew twice as fast as rural areas (World Bank, 1999). In 1950, only two cities had more than 8 million inhabitants, London and New York (Harrison, 1992). It is estimated that over the next 20 years, 93% of urban growth will take place, whereas the majority of the population in the continents of Africa and Asia will remain in the rural areas. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Urbanization poses a special challenge for building a sustainable route to development. If just one feature associated with the nutrition transition – meat consumption –were to be replaced by a greater emphasis on increasing availability and consumption of vegetables and fruits, patterns of production would have to be markedly different. To reduce the use of nonrenewable energy via transportation, more local cultivation would be desirable. The UN Habitat 2 conference in 1996 concluded that urban or peri-urban agriculture will have to make a come-back, after decades of declining policy focus (UNDP, 1996). In fact, for half a century, the emphasis in global food policy, and certainly in the Western model of agriculture, has been specialization and intensification. Despite this policy marginalization, in 1993 15–20% of world food was produced in urban or peri-urban areas and was worth US$500 million (WHO-E, 1999). </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In cities such as Kathmandu where 37% of urban gardeners already grow all the vegetables consumed, and Hong Kong, where 45% of demand for vegetables is supplied from 5–6% of the land mass, a practical alternative to long-distance food exists. The new global movement of urban agriculture (Pretty, 1998), which tends to be encouraged on ecological and community self-reliance grounds, is beginning to receive public health encouragement. The WHO European Region, concerned about diet-related diseases, has recently produced an ambitious and far-sighted policy document (WHO-E, 1999). This notes that up to 80% of Siberian or Asian cities are already involved in urban agriculture, and that in 1997 in Poland, for example, 500 000 tonnes of vegetables and fruits (one-sixth of the national consumption) were produced on 8000 council “employees” gardens. In Georgia, home-produced food accounted for 28% of income and in Bulgaria in 1998, 47% of people were self-sufficient in vegetables and fruit and 90% of urban families make preserves for winter (WHO-E, 1999).</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> To orthodox Western food economists, a policy emphasis on local urban or peri-urban food smacks of an irrational return to a mythical halcyon past. But the case for thinking through the connection between what is produced, grown, processed, and consumed And how this happens sits at the heart of the new food policy challenge. The issue is not just quantity but quality. An illustration is the huge amount of nonrenewable energy (fossil fuels) used in transporting food increasingly long distances, as the food supply chain intensifies, concentrates, and specializes. To neoliberals, that a developing country could produce, for example, dessert apples and export them to the UK would be a good thing. The fact that the UK has a good climate and could grow its own is secondary. In 1993, 685 000GJ (equivalent to 14 million liters of fuel) was used to transport 417 207 tonnes of imported apples (Garnett, 1999). Four out of five pears and two out of three apples are now imported into the UK (Hoskins and Lobstein, 1998). In 1995, by foods such as these, the UK was a net importer of “ghost hectares”; in other words, its food needs were produced on 4.1 million hectares of other countries’ land, as well as its own (MacLaren et al., 1998). </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 189.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In the period 1975–91/93, food transported on UK roads increased by 30% and the distance traveled by the UK’s total food supply increased by approximately 60% (Hoskins and Lobstein, 1998). The distance traveled for shopping in general rose by 60% in that period, and travel by car more than doubled. With the citing of food shops (supermarkets) in ever larger stores, consumers had to use cars to get their food. So the net result is that the “modern”, “efficient” food economy externalized environmental costs (Raven and Lang, 1995). The western model of food shopping is not appropriate as a sustainable consumption paradigm, yet that is the cultural dimension behind the nutritional transition –a change of lifestyle with consequences for ecological as well as human health.</span></div></div>The Nutrition Transitionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448842623818851067noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.71289100000001310.850828 -156.01284500000003 63.329652 -35.412937000000014