Food Balances in Foreign Countries: Estimates for 28 Countries of Africa and Western Asia (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Food Balances in Foreign Countries: Estimates for 28 Countries of Africa and Western Asia

Western Asia and Africa have a population of some 300 million, or nearly 10 percent of the world’s total. Four-fifths or more depend on agriculture for a living. Commercial agriculture has made marked progress in many parts of the area, as is indicated by the fact that it is the world’s major source of palm oil produce, cocoa, long staple cotton, and dates, and a leading supplier of coffee, peanuts, flue-cured tobacco, oriental tobacco, citrus, and filberts. Most of the farmers, however, practice a subsistence type of agriculture. Food output per capita is generally low, and the area’s production is supplemented to only a minor extent by imports, consisting mostly of wheat and wheat flour, sugar, and some canned meat and milk.

Thus, food consumption levels are generally low, though the average per capita, in terms of energy value, is higher for the area as a whole than for the densely populated Far East. It also appears to be higher in nearly all countries of Western Asia, Northern Africa, and Southern Africa. In most parts of these regions, however, heavy dependence on starchy foods is as characteristic of the diet as in the Far East.

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