Considering first the US alone: given surplus production and low utilization of potential resources means efficient use of existing resources. This is empirically validated by US farm output growing 1.63% annually from 1948 to 2009; input use over the same time grew only 0.11% [1]. Using less land for farming is logistically and ecologically sound.
Expanding to the world, why are low income countries, in aggregate, exporting agricultural products (but not raw foods) while the local population starves [2]? I do not understand the nuances of the global grocery supply chain to answer this definitively but my background in finance intuits me to believe it is a distribution rather than agriculture problem - witness how "it costs more to truck a container from Djibouti to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, than to ship the same container from China to Djibouti" [3].
Expanding to the world, why are low income countries, in aggregate, exporting agricultural products (but not raw foods) while the local population starves [2]? I do not understand the nuances of the global grocery supply chain to answer this definitively but my background in finance intuits me to believe it is a distribution rather than agriculture problem - witness how "it costs more to truck a container from Djibouti to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, than to ship the same container from China to Djibouti" [3].
[1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/agproductivity/
[2] http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServ... (See Annex Table 1 and Annex Table 2, pages 25-28)
[3] http://www.economist.com/node/21553050