Impactos do crescimento populacional sobre a produção agrícola de alimentos e demanda dos fatores primários de produção: uma abordagem de blocos econômicos

Abstract

Today, the world is home to approximately 7 billion people. The capacity of food production, as this number will continue to expand, is a recurring concern in the agenda of this dissertation. In this context, land is one of the main factors affected, since urban sprawl invades arable spaces and, in contrast, the demand for its use for food production increases as the population grows. Given the magnitudes and specificities of this problem, it is crucial that countries obtain productivity gains as a way of ensuring the maintenance of food supply. The main objective of this dissertation is to measure the impacts of population growth on agricultural food production and production factors demand for the periods 2011-2020, 20112025 and 2011-2030. To this end, research initially disaggregates the world into sets of countries, classifying them only by their degree of similarity in agricultural activities. These groups were called Agricultural Economic Blocks (BEA). The articulation of the techniques of Cluster Analysis and Discriminant Analysis made it possible to arrive at the final configuration of seven BEAs for the year 2011. Data on population projections were estimated by the United Nations Population Division under eight fertility hypotheses. Each of these was a simulation scenario. For the implementation of the population shocks, the Computable General Equilibrium model, the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) was used. The main results show that with population expansion, the price of land will increase and, on the other hand, the demand for the factor will decrease as well as its availability for use. In addition, demand and food production will increase. However, agricultural commodities will be produced mainly for domestic consumption and even with gains in productivity, countries will have greater dependence on international trade. Countries with the lowest levels of population growth may be considered as "world food developers" as they will be the main exporters of agricultural commodities for all blocks.