Food and Feed Prospects to 2020 in the West Asia/North Africa Region

Abstract

The West Asia/North Africa (WANA) region contains large areas with rainy winters and hot, dry summers. The social-ecology of the region must be respected as well as the physical ecology. Dryland farming, irrigated farming and rangelands in WANA are often linked through the diets of grazing livestock. Animal products are present at low levels in traditional diets of the region, compared with diets in the US, UK, France and Japan. Population growth has been rapid and many WANA countries are expected to sustain increasing annual increments to their human populations through the year 2020.

Policy issues are reviewed and several indications are noted: human capital (including institutions) needs strengthening; rangeland tenure and farm-level decision making require attention; informal seed sectors need support; fertilizer use in dryland farming can be increased within better-tuned crop rotations and with regard for weather risks and world prices; research support is needed for enhanced farm-level livestock management (including nutrition) and this needs to be better balanced with respect to current emphasis on national veterinary and animal breeding investments.

Food and Feed demand has out-paced domestic production in most WANA countries and will continue to do so. The resource bases for traditional livestock raising (native pastures and crop residues) have come under serious pressure, and large feed deficits are projected. Differences are so great among the WANA countries that undiscriminating aggregations of their prospects may be seriously misleading. Sub-aggregates of the WANA countries are used here to distinguish these differences in prospects.

Keywords: Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sudan, Pakistan, food security, foods, feeds, basic needs, productivity, agricultural policies, land use, seed, fertilizers, production possibilities, production increase, production factors, domestic production, population change, forecasting

JEL Classification: Q1, Q11, Q15, F4, O1, O4