Table Of ContentSome other titles of interest
BALOGH, T.
Fact and Fancy in International Economic Relations
BIRCH, G. G. et al
Food Science
BROWN, A.
Great Ideas in Communications
CLAYTON, H. W.
Agrarian Development in Peasant Economies
CUMES, J. W. C.
The Indigent Rich
HUGHES, D. J.
Science and Starvation
MERHAV, M.
Technological Dependence, Monopoly and Growth
PASSMAN, S.
Scientific and Technological Communication
PEARCE, A.
Great Ideas in Economics
RIVKIN, S.
Technology Unbound
WEST, J.
Alternatives in Development
The terms of our inspection copy service apply to all the above
books. Full details of all books listed and specimen copies of
journals listed will gladly be sent upon request.
By Bread Alone
LESTER R. BROWN
with
ERIK P. ECKHOLM
PUBLISHED FOR THE OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL
PERGAMON PRESS
Oxford - New York ■· Toronto
Sydney · Paris · Braunschweig
U.K. Pergamon Press Ltd., Headington Hill Hall, Oxford OX3 OBW,
England
U.S.A. Pergamon Press Inc., Maxwell House, Fairview Park,
Elmsford, New York 10523, U.S.A.
CANADA Pergamon of Canada Ltd., 207 Queen's Quay West,
Toronto 1, Canada
AUSTRALIA Pergamon Press (Aust.) Pty. Ltd., 19a Boundary Street,
Rushcutters Bay, N.S.W. 2011, Australia
FRANCE Pergamon Press SARL, 24 rue des Ecoles,
75240 Paris, Cedex 05, France
WEST GERMANY Pergamon Press GmbH, 3300 Braunschweig, Postfach 2923,
Burgplatz 1, West Germany
Copyright © 1975 Pergamon Press Ltd.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in
any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without permission in writing from the
publishers
First edition 1974; Reprinted 1975
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Brown, Lester Russell, 1934-
By bread alone.
Bibliography: p.
I. Food supply. 2. Population. I. Eckholm, Erik P., joint author.
II. Title
HD9000.6.B77 338.Γ9 74-16477
0 08 019794 9 Flexi
0 08 019946 1 Hard
First published in the United States of America in
1974 by Praeger Publishers Inc. (< 1974 held
by The Overseas Development Council
Not for sale in the U.S.A. and U.S.A. territories
(Philippine Islands and Canada)
Printed in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd., Guildford, Surrey
FOREWORD
by JAMES P. GRANT
President, Overseas Development Council
Lester Brown and Erik Eckholm break important new ground in
their timely analysis of the changing food situation. Soaring world
food prices in early 1973 apparently symbolized the emergence of
a new economic era and a new international order. Dramatic rises
in food prices were followed by jolting developments on several
fronts. Most conspicuous were the Arab oil embargo, the raising of
oil prices, and sharply rising fertilizer prices, accompanied by
severe cutbacks in fertilizer exports to developing countries as the
industrial nations pre-empted scarce supplies.
Viewed from the perspective of the 1980's, the crises of scarcity
of the mid-'seventies will probably appear as essentially the product
of continuing rapid economic and population growth within the
constraints of a finite physical system and relatively inflexible polit
ical and economic structures. Global increases in population and in
affluence have together doubled the annual increase in demand for
food in the last twenty years. The current demand for some 30 mil
lion tons, strains the capacity of the world agricultural system. Sky
rocketing world demand for other commodities, most notably oil,
is converting traditional buyers' markets into sellers' markets.
Global economic shifts of this magnitude rarely take place
smoothly, and the world now faces very difficult policy choices.
Will governments respond by making the structural changes re
quired through international negotiations and cooperation? Or will
the world become locked into a pattern of chaos and conflict
analogous to that of the 1930's, sentencing whole nations and much
of mankind to massive suffering?
By Bread Alone is a case study of the world's most essential
X FOREWORD
commodity, illustrating both the problems posed by the new inter
national order and the policy alternatives open to mankind. As the
authors show, the United States, the world's breadbasket, has spe
cial responsibilities in this area. By skillfully handling its approach
to this basic commodity, the United States can help to shape the
new "rules of the game" for access to raw materials, for expanding
production, for establishing global reserves, and for changing life
styles—new approaches needed for successful global management
of many essential global resources.
Two of the policy recommendations in By Bread Alone warrant
highlighting. First, a cooperative effort to promote rapid agricul
tural development in the poorer nations of the world—with par
ticular attention to increasing the production of smaller farms—is
urgently needed. The developed countries have reached the point
where large-scale increases in agricultural production over the next
decade will be possible only at substantially higher costs. Readily
cultivable land and water resources have already been utilized, and
fertilizer use is already so intensive that in many cases additional
applications bring negligible returns. In other words, if the one-
third increase in world grain production that will be required ten
years hence is to come primarily from the developed countries, food
prices will necessarily be much higher and will add to inflation
everywhere.
If, on the other hand, the bulk of the increase in production
comes from the developing countries, as the authors recommend,
the cost of food will be less likely to increase. The limitations of
organization, financing, and applying technology have kept the use
of inputs low in most of the poorer countries. As one consequence,
an additional ton of fertilizer will produce twice as much additional
rice or wheat in South Asia as in Japan, Europe, or North America.
Moreover, the developing countries have large pools of underem
ployed labor which can be put to use in lieu of mechanical power.
Increased production in the developing countries, relying primarily
on small farmers, results not only in maximum yields per acre but
also in many ancillary benefits—increased rural employment, im
proved income distribution, reduced rural-urban migration, and,
by increasing the motivation for smaller families, lower birth rates.
Of equal importance is the authors' emphasis on slowing the
FOREWORD xi
growth in demand for food. This requires bringing population
growth to a halt sooner than is now contemplated by most demog
raphers and political leaders. The world mus ftind means of stabiliz
ing population far below the presently projected 10-16 billion, and
the authors suggest possible means for doing so. But the need to
slow the growth in demand for food also calls for a reduction in
grain use by the world's affluent minority. (Grain consumption in
North America, for example, is now approaching one ton annually
per person.) This can be accomplished in part through a modest
change in diets, reducing consumption of grain-intensive livestock
products.
By Bread Alone is unique in its interdisciplinary analysis of
future world food-production prospects. As world leaders consider
the challenges brought by global food scarcity, it should serve as an
exceedingly useful resource.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book owes much to our many Overseas Development Coun
cil colleagues who participated in its production. Blondeen Du-
haney typed numerous drafts with skill and efficiency. Georgia
Shelton, Deborah Everett, and Margaret Koch helped with the
typing. Valeriana Kallab provided valuable editorial assistance,
aided by Carol Hoban. The office management of Michael O'Hare
helped make it possible to meet tight deadlines. John Tidd's re
search support made writing the book much easier.
Gladys Topkis, our editor at Praeger, was a delight to work with.
All or parts of the manuscript were usefully reviewed by Raymond
Ewell, James Grant, George Harrar, Nathan Kofïsky, John Sewell,
Davidson Sommers, and Sterling Wortman, but the conclusions re
main the responsibility of the authors alone.
1.
OVERVIEW: THE CHANGING FACE
OF FOOD SCARCITY
In the early 'seventies the soaring demand for food, spurred by both
continuing population growth and rising affluence, has begun to
outrun the productive capacity of the world's farmers and fisher
men. The result has been declining food reserves, skyrocketing
food prices, and intense competition among countries for available
food supplies. Fundamental changes in the world food situation
have left governments, institutions, and individuals everywhere un
prepared and vulnerable.
Growing global insecurity on the food front is directly related to
the precipitous decline in world food reserves. Since World War II,
the world has relied on two major food reserves: carryover stocks
of grain in the principal exporting countries and cropland held idle
in the United States under government farm programs. Together
they provided a substantial buffer against the vagaries of weather
and the whims of the market place. In 1961 these reserves
amounted to 222 million tons of grain, or 95 days' worth of world
consumption. By 1974, however, they had declined to a level
representing global needs for only 26 days.
Thus in mid-1974 the world food supply-demand equation was
precariously balanced. A poor harvest in any major producing
country—the United States, the Soviet Union, India, or China—
would send economic shock waves not only throughout the food
sector of the world economy but, as it fueled the fires of inflation,
4 BY BREAD ALONE
throughout its other sectors as well. The vulnerability of the supply-
demand balance to the weather suggested that the climate itself
might well replace pollution as the dominant global environmental
concern.
In this situation, national governments have resorted to a variety
of techniques to obtain or ensure adequate food supplies for their
people. Their actions have given rise to a new phenomenon: a
global politics of food scarcity. During the summer of 1972, the
Soviet Union employed secrecy to corner the world's wheat mar
ket by buying a large share of the exportable supplies of wheat
before even the American government knew what was happening.
The following summer, the United States—the source of 85 per
cent of all the soybeans entering the world market—abruptly
announced an export embargo on soybeans in an effort to curb
soaring soybean and food prices at home. This action, taken with
out warning or consultation with other countries, triggered a wave
of diplomatic protests from Europe and Asia. For the billion people
in East Asia for whom soybeans are a vital food staple and an
essential source of scarce protein, the U.S. decision posed an omi
nous threat.
A similar situation developed with rice when Thailand, a leading
world supplier, banned rice exports for several months in order to
prevent politically costly price rises at home. This move was suc
cessful in its objective, but it wreaked havoc with eiïorts to prevent
runaway food prices in other Southeast Asian countries. And in a
similar spirit Brazil, despite its widely proclaimed food-producing
potential, imposed export restrictions on both soybeans and beef.
The abrupt transition of the world food economy from a buyer's
market to a seller's market that these national moves signaled in
the early 'seventies, as well as the consequent rise in food prices,
was not widely anticipated. Between late 1972 and the end of
1973, the world price of wheat tripled, and the price of rice fol
lowed. Soybean prices doubled in a twenty-four month period.
The sudden increase in wheat prices was followed in a matter
of months by an equally dramatic rise in petroleum prices. From
1960 to 1972 the world price of a bushel of wheat and that of a
barrel of oil were nearly equal, ranging from $1.35 to slightly over
$2.00. A bushel öf wheat could be traded for a barrel of oil in the
OVERVIEW 5
world marketplace. In late 1973, the price of wheat soared past
$5.00. For a brief period a bushel of wheat could be exchanged
for two barrels of oil. Then came the Christmas Eve, 1973, oil
price increase by the oil-exporting countries—the second doubling
in price within the year—and the price of oil soared above that
of wheat, reaching $8.00 per barrel.
These dramatic price increases raised one of the oldest questions
with which economists have wrestled: What is the true value of a
commodity? What is a fair and reasonable price? There are no
obvious answers. In trying to shed light on this issue, several points
need to be kept in mind. Wheat is a renewable resource, oil is not.
Most of the world's exportable supplies of each are controlled by
a single geographic region: North America in the case of wheat,
the Middle East in the case of oil. Countries exporting oil or wheat
stand to benefit from the price rises. No country exports both, but
a great number import both. The poorer countries importing both
wheat and oil suffered the greatest damage. The many countries
having no valuable raw materials of their own to export exhausted
their limited foreign-exchange reserves in a matter of months, and
several were on the verge of international bankruptcy.
Short supplies of food and energy dramatize the extent of global
interdependence. No country is entirely isolated from the effects of
these scarcities—or from their trade and monetary repercussions.
The capacity of U.S. agriculture to supply low-cost food to Amer
ican consumers was thought to be inexhaustible, yet in 1973
Americans suddenly discovered that they were sharing food scarcity
with consumers throughout the world. The United States was pay
ing its rapidly rising oil-import bill with food exports. Indeed, the
share of world food and energy consumption crossing national
boundaries is climbing steadily. Japan imports well over half of
its total cereal supplies, Egypt nearly 40 per cent. The countries
of the European Economic Community import nearly all their
petroleum, as well as four fifths of the high-protein feeds for their
livestock industries. The United States already depends on imports
for one third of its petroleum supplies; if its recent demand trend
persists, it is expected to import half by 1985.
These events of the early 'seventies signal a fundamental shift in
the structure of the world food economy. Throughout most of the
