INTRODUCTION

Half of humanity consumes only 1200 calories per day, whereas one estimates with the double the average daily needs for a man in good health. However, the totality of the food resources available of planet would be enough to nourish all the men, at least if they equitably were distributed and distributed well. But the situation of the food in the world is characterized nowadays by an imbalance between rich zones and extremely impoverished zones. In the first, if one excludes some historical aberrations like famines caused by the political authorities (for example in Ukraine under Stalin), the food shortage has disappeared for at least a century. While, in the seconds, which gather the very great majority of the population of planet, the hunger remains, according to the terms of the United Nations for agriculture and food (FAO), “the most extreme demonstration of poverty and the destitution”.

I-FIGURES

1-World data

The first data concerning the world food is the capacity of planet to produce food. On 130.5 million km2 of emerged grounds firm, which thus excludes the lakes and waterway, 49.6 million is devoted to the agriculture, including 34.6 million with the permanent pasture, and 15 million to the various types of cultures: temporary for 13.7 million km2, permanent like the fruit trees or the vine for 1.3 million km2. The average of the grounds per capita is thus established, if one takes into account only the cultivated arable lands, around 0.25 ha per capita and per annum, and this average should continue to lower and reach 0.15 ha per capita and per annum in 2050; there will be then, according to the forecasts of the United Nations, some 10 billion individuals. The question of the productivity of the grounds, which remains for the international agencies the principal palliative with the fall in absolute value of the surface of the arable lands, is thus in the middle of the debates on the food in the contemporary world - one returns