22 is really a year full of disasters. The ravages of COVID-19 and various natural disasters have made many places in the world turbulent. What is the most precious in troubled times, there is no doubt that it must be food, and everyone can't help eating. As early as when the COVID-19 epidemic was just controlled in China, China put forward the slogan of saving food, which is not groundless. Now the situation of world food supply seems really critical.
Long before the outbreak of COVID-19, locusts were raging in the Middle East and North Africa, and it was even once said that locusts might fly into China. Fortunately, it didn't have a big impact at home in the end. However, there is no doubt that the plague of locusts has affected the local grain output, and the area where the plague of locusts is raging is the area with rapid population growth. The local grain demand is increasing day by day, but the output has been unable to go up.
This round of food price increase is actually more due to the rapid population growth in Africa and the Middle East. Take Nigeria as an example. In the current national population ranking, Nigeria ranks seventh in the world with a population of 195.8 million, and it has a population growth of 2.61%, leading all countries in the top 15 in the world. However, Nigeria's land area is not large, with 923,76 square kilometers ranking 31st in the world. Compared with Russia's land area of 17,98,2 square kilometers, Nigeria is only 5% of Russia's. However, in less than 1 million square kilometers of land, it supports nearly 2 million people, and the population density reaches 212 people per square kilometer, which is very crowded.
There has always been a word called demographic dividend in China, but this is only for China. The average education rate of China's population is high, which has trained various advanced talents for industry. However, the so-called demographic dividend does not exist for a country like Nigeria. The education rate is not high, and no industry can undertake the employment of the population. The most serious thing is that Nigeria cannot be self-sufficient and needs to import food!
In recent years, due to the progress of medical conditions in Africa, the infant survival rate has greatly increased, which has led to the population explosion. However, most African countries have no basic ability to be self-sufficient in industry and food, and they can only export various resources in exchange for food. Nowadays, food prices are soaring and the food supply is getting less and less, but the population is still growing. It is foreseeable that this situation may eventually affect the social stability of African countries, and the Malthusian trap is just around the corner, and they don't know it yet!