Food Security, Agriculture and Policy Making: When Believing is Not Enough

May Yeung

Estey Centre Journal of International Law and Trade Policy, 2022, vol. 23, issue 2

Abstract: Global population has grown from approximately one billion a hundred years ago to eight billion in 2022. To feed this rapidly expanding population has required sustained technological advances in agricultural production and food storage, transportation and processing. This technological progress is fostered by the application of science and engineering to mechanization, chemistry and genetics. While not everyone is well fed, most are. Feeding the additional two billion people expected by 2050 will require continued technological advances. Some countries, however, are in the process of eschewing the use of modern agricultural technology to return agricultural production to pre-modern methods. They do so at their peril and, in some cases, threaten the food security of their populations. The major mandated changes in production methods also have the potential to create barriers to international trade – again negatively impacting on food security. This paper reports on the results of three such experiments in Sri Lanka, Mexico and the European Union. The conclusion is that policy makers should take more care when making radical changes in agricultural policy pertaining to production methods.

Keywords: Agricultural; and; Food; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/329969/files/Yeung23-2lay.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:ecjilt:329969

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.329969

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Estey Centre Journal of International Law and Trade Policy from Estey Centre for Law and Economics in International Trade Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search (aesearch@umn.edu).