ABSTRACT
In 1993, two reports about the world food outlook reached opposite conclusions. The first, a product of the International Economics Department of the World Bank, concluded that the supply situation has been steadily improving, and that prospects for sustaining this positive trend are encouraging. Although rates of growth for cereals appear to be plateauing, so are rates of growth of demand because of changes in economies and diets across the world (Mitchell and Ingco, 1993). The second, a product of Lester Brown’s World Watch Institute, continued to announce a world food crisis. This doomsday perspective insists that current levels of food production cannot be sustained, and that a crisis of non-renewable resources in agriculture (soils, water, biodiversity, energy) exacerbated by population growth is underway (Brown, 1994).
