by Piyaporn Hawiset
14-JUN-99
Asians ate better in the 1990s thanks to growing economies and modern farming, but a senior United Nations food official warned on June 14, 1999 that population growth must fall and land use improve to avoid food crises in the new millennium. Prem Nath, assistant director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization, spoke to agriculture ministers from countries with half the world's population -- China, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
"In terms of population size, Asia is responsible for a lion's share of the annual increase of the developing world's population," Prem said. "For comfort, the fertility rate must go down -- and fast."
Increasing urban populations are limiting the expansion of farmland, Prem said. Meanwhile, estimates indicate that water availability per capita in Asia halved in the 30 years ending in 1980 and will probably fall 35 percent more by 2000. The dwindling resources are putting more and more pressure on land under cultivation and will eventually degrade it, putting the food security of whole countries at risk.
Prem noted that the urbanization and rising incomes due to explosive economic growth over the past two decades has changed eating patterns and given people a more reliable food supply. Annual meat consumption in China has doubled to 20 kilograms (44 pounds), Prem said. But the meatier diet has required a sevenfold increase in the amount of grain needed to raise livestock, Prem said. The livestock population will increasingly become "a major influence in the future state of food security."
Asian Crisis Two Years on:
The two Thai children come home from school hungry in the late afternoon. A makeshift wooden bridge quakes as they scramble down to their tiny shack built inches above a flyblown, sour-smelling swamp.
"Nothing to eat unless you go to your grandmother's," Sagna To-ea tells her daughter, Nisa, 13, and son, Somchai, 11. It's two years since Sagna had to turn to her mother, a masseuse, to feed her family. Two years since Thailand's economy, once the world's fastest growing, crashed.