AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD SECTOR

IN THE FACE OF THE PROBLEM

OF FEEDING THE WORLD

Józef Stanisław Zegar

Abstract. The article has the objective to present one of the most important global problems, i.e. provide food for the increasing number of the World’s inhabitants. Perspective for solving this problem, outlined by the success of industrial agriculture in the second half of the twentieth century, seems to fade away. It is because we observe a significant increase in demand for food and other agricultural products and at the same time anti-growth forces and environmental barrier as well as ambiguous results of globalisation become exposed. It puts the problem of creating a sufficient supply of agricultural products and their distribution in order to eliminate hunger and malnutrition, in a new light. Managing this challenge requires applying new methods of producing agricultural products, because it is impossible to continue using industrial technologies, due to the change of development conditions. Globalisation significantly, if not fundamentally, changes conditions of agriculture functioning and development. Farms are under extreme pressure from the global market represented by large processing and trade corporations and de facto deprived of the freedom of making decisions on production, thus becoming a cogwheel in global food chains.  The number of farms with the ability to stay on the surface of economic life is decreasing constantly. Compulsion to concentrate and the growth (accumulation) imperative typical of capitalistic economy collides more sharply with the compulsion to protect the environment. In such situation it is obvious and advisable to seek different solutions – an alternative system and development of agriculture as well as production and distribution of food.

Keywords: global food problem, globalisation, environmental barrier, sustainable development of agriculture.

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Prof. dr hab. Józef Stanisław Zegar

Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics – 

National Research Institute

Warsaw, Poland