EAST EUROPE: Food self-sufficiency by the year 2000

• by IPS Correspondents (washington)
• Sunday, November 13, 1994
• Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON, Nov 13 (IPS) - Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (FSU) may be producing enough food by the year 2000 to sustain the region's population, according to a new report released here this week.

But the study by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) warns it will be difficult to achieve that goal unless the countries of the region push forward with reforms to make the agricultural sector more responsive to market forces.

The report also calls for the region's economies to open themselves more to international trade.

"If the policies that currently distort food markets are phased out, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union would shift from a net food deficit to a surplus of 30-50 million metric tonnes of food per year," according to the study's author, Rod Tyers, currently an economics professor at Australian National University.

The study, entitled 'Economic Reform in Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Implications for International Food Markets,' also warns that increased food production in the former socialist countries could spell bad news for food producers in both wealthy, industrial nations and in poorer developing countries.

As food from the former Soviet bloc enters world markets, international grain prices could drop by up to 20 percent. That could hurt current exporters like the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina and New Zealand.

Poor farmers in developing countries would also suffer if imported food becomes cheaper than food produced at home, according to the report.

"The majority of the world's poor subsist on agriculture and agricultural-related activities in the rural areas of developing countries," Tyers says. "Cheaper food would decrease the level of economic activity from which they earn their living."

At the same time, however, Worldwatch Institute, another Washington-based research group, is warning that demand for imported grain in China and some African countries may rise quickly over the next decade.

That would mitigate the downward pressure on food prices predicted in the IPFRI report, according to Elene Wilken, a Worldwatch staff researcher.

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