São Paulo – As of the year of 2050, the Arab wed will still need to import half or more of the foods it consumes, according to the regional communications manager of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad), Teysir Al Ganem. The UN agency’s representative spoke on the matter during an international conference on scientific journalism held last week in Qatar, according to the Doha-based Gulf Times newspaper.
“The Arab world is the region that is most hit by food imports and fluctuations in food prices,” said Ganem, according to the newspaper. The assessment falls in line with the forecasts of the Agricultural Outlook 2011-2020, published last June by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
According to the report, the Middle East and North Africa are going to increase their food imports rapidly throughout the decade. The region is going to drive the growth of international meat trade, for instance.
By 2050, Ganem highlighted that the population of the Arab world should more than double, to reach 692 million people, which in turn should strongly boost the demand. At present, foodstuffs account for more than 10% of everything the region imports from the world. In the case of Brazil, agribusiness represents 69% of exports to Arabs.
At the same conference in Doha, according to the Gulf Times, the director general of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (Icarda), Mahmoud El-Solh, added that in the meantime, production in the Arab world should suffer due to climate change, in particular the growing drought.
In North Africa, for instance, he estimates a 15% to 50% decline in volume of rainfall. El-Solh stated that worldwide, the expansion of agricultural areas will be restricted to countries in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, the expansion of crops should stem mostly from increased productivity.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
