The experience of the 1990s shows that using short-term trends in global markets to make judgments
about long-term food security is next to useless.
Indeed,year-to-year changes in prices and production—and the influence that these changes have on the attention
devoted to the global food situation—may contribute to long-term food problems by encouraging complacency
during periods of strong harvests.
To understand thefuture of food supply and demand and food security, it is
essential instead to focus on long-term forces, such as income growth, population growth, and technological
change in agriculture driven by investments in agricultural research, irrigation, and roads.