12:01AM
Chart of the Day: World grain consumption
Saturday, March 19, 2011 at 12:01AM 
WSJ from early March.
Good example of the impact of the rising global middle class.
Also tells you something about the timing of the 2.0/Facebook Revolutions in food-dependent Arab world.
Reader Comments (3)
How many people does 2.25 billion metric tons feed?
How many billion (or trillion?) metric tons of grain will be needed to feed the predicted global population of 9 billion people?
How many acres will need to be planted, and how much petrochemical-based fertilizer will be required to grow this much grain?
Q: What did the boy scout say when he fixed the car horn?
A: Beep Repaired!
Great comment,
Remember the US is set to double again it's agricultural output by 2030 using the same amount of land. There are 3 areas for ag expansion, Russia/Ukraine/Kazakhstan, Interior of Brazil, and parts of Central Africa. Feeding 9 billion people requires a 70% food increase from today. This will always be contentious since it is happening, not achieved yet.
Also, completion of the doha round on food prices would help the most since these mid-east revolutions started over bread prices. The US has the Middle East/China/India over a breadbasket, which dwarfs any oil importation. Plus, it has a geography advantage of a northern climate with seasonal change, with disease killing frosts that Africa and parts of South America do not. Plus, the US is a big country that can withstand droughts and floods.
If Ethiopia gets a flood with nearly 80% of workforce in agriculture, the whole country is screwed since the drough affects the size of entire country. That is my issue with all these interventions, where is the drive to get people making a living doing something other than farming while being able to feed themselves? The workforce should be able to feed themselves for the most part using only 10% or less of their workforce in agriculture. Agriculture is too hard (I was a dairy farmer for 17 years) to have the entire country looking out the window for rain each day and spending 10 hours a day just gathering food to live!
Check out the link below for my siting of information.
Thanks.
Derek
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/Issues_papers/HLEF2050_Global_Agriculture.pdf
It would certainly help if the US would stop trying to turn corn into a transportation fuel.