# **3. Scale, technology adoption and global food supplies: Past lessons and future prospects**

Despite many changes brought about by Asia’s Green Revolution, sector productivity in Asia is still driven by what happens on small farms, and the same is true in Sub-Saharan Africa. In East Asia, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, 95 percent of the farms are less than 5 hectares and these farms occupy most of the farmland in these regions (Lowder, Skoet and Singh, 2014). Additionally, historical farm census data suggest that the small scale of farming in Asia and Africa persists, even when economic growth in non-agricultural sectors is high. In fact, if there is a noticeable trend, the trend is toward smaller average farm size (Table 1).

Nonetheless, the small scale of farms in Africa need not stand in the way of technology adoption and productivity gains. The breakthroughs that launched Green Revolutions in Asia and Latin America largely centered on seeds, not machines, so the benefits were available to farms of all sizes. Nevertheless, initial adoption rates were highest on Asia’s small farms. For example, Evenson (2003, p. 450) reports that by 1998, about 82 percent of the area in Asia planted to major crops used improved seeds. In Latin America, where farms are larger, adoption rates were similar for wheat, a significant export crop; however, rates were lower overall, with 62 percent of the land planted to modern varieties by 1998.

Only in Africa did the spread of the new technologies stall. By 1998, only 27 percent of farmland in Sub-Saharan Africa was planted to modern varieties. Adoption rates improved subsequently, but remained well below rates on Asia’s small farms. By 2005, the adoption of new varieties were 45 percent for maize, 26 percent for rice, and 15 percent for sorghum (Binswanger and McCalla 2010; Pingali 2012).

However, gains outside Africa were sufficient to drive global food markets. During the first Green Revolution, productivity gains from improvements in crop germplasm boosted global agricultural productivity by 1 percent per year for wheat, 0.8 percent for rice and 0.7 percent for maize (Evenson and Gollin 2003a; Pingali 2012). From 1961 to 2001, world maize, rice and wheat yields grew annually at 2.1 percent, 1.9 percent and 2.3 percent, well above the 1.8 percent growth in population (FAOSTAT, 2015). In Asia, rice yields grew by 2 percent annually and maize and wheat yields grew by more than 3 percent. Productivity gains outpaced demand growth and real prices for food fell.

Since 2000, the global experience with food prices has changed. Real cereal prices, which declined at an annualized rate of 2.4 percent from 1961 to 2000, rose on average by 6.8 percent per year between 2000 and 2013; real food prices rose by 5.5 percent (World Bank Pink Sheet 2015). Additionally, the period was punctuated with sharp price spikes with harsh consequences for the poor. Food prices fell subsequently, although current and projected prices remain above 1990s levels (World Bank 2015).

Rising along with prices are concerns that food security gains will be hard to maintain going forward. The global population is expected to grow to 9 billion before leveling off in 2050; twice as many people are expected to live in Africa in 2050 as there were in 2010 (Godfray et al. 2010b). Income gains, especially in fast-growing Asia, are driving a still-incomplete nutritional transition that features a growing demand for animal protein and feed crops, which compete with food crops for land (Popkin, 1998; Delgado, Narrod,, and Tiongco, 2008). Additionally, although they represent a poor choice of instruments to address climate change, biofuel mandates and subsidies have become an integral part of agricultural and energy polices, adding pressure on agricultural resources (de Gorter and Just, 2010).

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