1. The coefficient of variation of annual cereals production (standard deviation of annual production from the period mean as percent of the same mean) in Morocco was 36 % in the 1980’s and had jumped to 59 % in the 1990’s. For Algeria the numbers are 30 % and 57 %, respectively).
2. When prices rise, the amount of grain fed to livestock tends to decline, thus releasing grain to the food uses and providing a partial response to production shortfalls. This response reflects both the higher price elasticity of demand for livestock products compared to that of the food demand for cereals (thus depressing by relatively more the demand for meat than for food cereals) as well as the response of livestock producers who substitute grain with other feedstuffs or more usually they reduce herd sizes. For example, when grain prices rose sharply during 1972–1974, the drop in United States feed consumption was as large as the total global production shortfall.
3. The satisfactory nutritional situation attained in most non-EU Mediterranean countries is also seen in the latest FAO estimates of the incidence of under nutrition in the developing countries (FAO 2001). According to these estimates, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Turkey and Lebanon belong in the category of developing countries with the lowest incidence (under 2.5% of the population), a category to which only another 6 countries (out of a total of 99 developing countries for which estimates are provided) belong, e.g. Hong Kong (China SAR), South Korea, Saudi Arabia. Egypt belongs to the next best category (under nutrition 2.5–4.0%) together with another 3 developing countries, while Jordan, Algeria and Morocco have estimates in the range 5–6%.
4. Although the global production capacity may not be much affected, the shift of cultivation zones towards higher latitudes can have disastrous effects on the production potential of the tropics where the bulk of the food-insecure populations of the world reside (see: UNEP, “Climate Change: Billions Across the Tropics Face Hunger and Starvation as Big Drop in Crop Yields Forecast”, at: <
http://climatechange.unep.net
>, 10 November 2001).
5. Canada, the USA, Australia, Argentina, Uruguay, the EU (other than the four net importer Mediterranean countries: Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal) and, for rice: Thailand and Vietnam.