condition, topography, temperature and water supply. 5) It was more than 1,800 million hectares, more than twice as much as the current cultivated area of 760 million hectares in the developing countries. Though most of the potentially cultivable area is in South America (48%) and Sub-Saharan Africa (44%). Other institutions and researchers came up with similar estimations during the seventies. If all of the potentially cultivable area which is mostly pasture and forested land could be converted to cultivated areas, it could cover the necessary increase in the grain demand for the developing countries from the current 1.1 billion tons to 2.3 billion tons in year 2020 (my estimates that will be presented later in this paper) needed for the population increase to 6.6 billion in 2020 from the current 4.3 billion. However, such a large scale conversion of pasture and forest is unlikely to happen. In the same report, the FAG also estimated that the cultivated area will be increased by only 93 million hectares in developing countries excluding China by 2010. 6) Reasons for the actual expansion in cultivated area being very small are as follows:
(1) Generally speaking arable land expansion and growth in food production in some developing countries must be accompanied by similar increase in the demand for food by the people in those countries. Those people are mostly farmers, and when they increase food production, then they can increase their farm income, and consequently can increase their demand for food. If they did not do so, and food production were increased in other developing or developed countries, severe poverty and highly biased income distribution resulted in the developing countries in question. The developing countries in South America and Sub-Saharan Africa have a little more than 10% each of the total population of all the developing countries. Thus vast cultivable land in these areas will not be reclaimed by large amount. Asian developing countries has seen rapid economic growth and population explosion as it has taken place in China and has 72% of the total population of all the developing countries. The Asian developing countries are the countries where a large expansion of cultivated area is strongly needed. But there is not much cultivable area left in Asia.
