Chart of the day: World's biggest ag producers

From FT story about effort of world policymakers to set up transparent info system on ag to avoid speculation, etc.  Good luck with that.  Farmers the world over tend to be tight-lipped, whether family or corporate.

What I found interesting about chart.  China, of course, is a huge ag producer, second only to US and not that far behind.  Problem is, of course, that China has 4 times as many people, so it's not really an exporter of note and, like India, consumes most of what it produces and then must import additionally (India less so, but as its middle class grows and climate change makes growing harder, it will follow China into a significant dependency).  EU is decent exporter, and then you get into the familiar South American and Black Sea countries, plus Canada and Pakistan (the former being more like US - a big exporter, and the latter less so because of its large population).  

So you see, just a handful of countries do the bulk of the producing and when you take out the self-consuming, the pool gets even smaller.

Again, water is crucial for the 21st century, and the West Hem has roughly 3 times as much as it needs - by population, so the West largely feeds the East, meaning protecting the food supply in the West becomes important in an age likely to feature biological terror.