Current trends suggest that another 1.5 billion people will be added to the population of developing Asian countries by 2025. If one assumes that incomes will also grow at rates closely resembling recent trends, then both the direct and indirect effects of this expansion will mean an annual increase of basic staple food demands by roughly 0.5 percent over the next 30 years. Can Asia feed itself? Is Asia’s access to food threatened? The case for optimism has not been lost: past decades saw even more daunting food demand-supply situation than that looming at the turn of the next century. This does not, of course, suggest that food insecurity will not be a threat to some or even many of the countries in the region. Inefficient policy and institutional responses to changing conditions, including the changing environment for agriculture, have enormous influence on food security outcomes. China has, for example, demonstrated its remarkable capability to respond to challenges of rising food demands despite severe resource constraints. In recent years, the response of Bangladesh and India to these challenges has likewise been remarkable. What is often missed by many pessimists, including Can-China-feed-itself alarmists, is that, given favourable policies and governance structure, societies do respond, often in predictable ways, to changes in factor endowments and opportunities.

              Population pressure thus has adverse influence on food security, particularly if policies and institutional arrangements prevent efficient and equitable adjustment to the pressure. But the direction of causality also works the other way: food security influences demographic transition in developing countries, i.e., the transition to lower fertility rates. Because of its interrelationship with health and fertility decisions, it is an important element of strategies aimed at reducing population growth and promoting socio-economic development.
* Source: http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/ab981e/ab981e07.htm#bm07.3  *