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Peak wheat is the concept that
agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people ...
production, due to its high use of water and energy inputs, is subject to the same profile as oil and other
fossil fuel A fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the remains of dead plants and animals that is extracted and burned as a fuel. The main fossil fuels are coal, oil, and natural gas. Fossil fuels ma ...
production. The central tenet is that a point is reached, the "peak", beyond which agricultural production plateaus and does not grow any further, and may even go into permanent decline. Based on current
supply and demand In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It postulates that, holding all else equal, in a competitive market, the unit price for a particular good, or other traded item such as labor or ...
factors for agricultural
commodities In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a co ...
(e.g., changing diets in the
emerging economies An emerging market (or an emerging country or an emerging economy) is a market that has some characteristics of a developed market, but does not fully meet its standards. This includes markets that may become developed markets in the future or were ...
,
biofuel Biofuel is a fuel that is produced over a short time span from biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels, such as oil. According to the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA ...
s, declining acreage under irrigation, growing
global population In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living. It was estimated by the United Nations to have exceeded 8 billion in November 2022. It took over 200,000 years of human prehistory and history for the ...
, stagnant
agricultural productivity Agricultural productivity is measured as the ratio of agricultural outputs to inputs. While individual products are usually measured by weight, which is known as crop yield, varying products make measuring overall agricultural output difficult ...
growth), some commentators are predicting a long-term annual production shortfall of around 2% which, based on the highly inelastic
demand curve In economics, a demand curve is a graph depicting the relationship between the price of a certain commodity (the ''y''-axis) and the quantity of that commodity that is demanded at that price (the ''x''-axis). Demand curves can be used either for ...
for food crops, could lead to sustained price increases in excess of 10% a year – sufficient to double crop prices in seven years. According to the
World Resources Institute The World Resources Institute (WRI) is a global research non-profit organization established in 1982 with funding from the MacArthur Foundation under the leadership of James Gustave Speth. WRI's activities are focused on seven areas: food, fore ...
, global per capita food production has been increasing substantially for the past several decades.


China

Water is a necessary
input Input may refer to: Computing * Input (computer science), the act of entering data into a computer or data processing system * Information, any data entered into a computer or data processing system * Input device * Input method * Input port (disa ...
for food production. Two billion people face acute
water shortage Water scarcity (closely related to water stress or water crisis) is the lack of fresh water resources to meet the standard water demand. There are two types of water scarcity: physical or economic water scarcity. Physical water scarcity is where ...
this century as Himalayan glaciers melt. Water shortages in China have helped lower the wheat harvest from its peak of 123 million tons in 1997 to below 100 million tons in recent years. But by 2020 production is back to 134Mt, see. Of China's 617 cities, 300 are facing water shortages. In many, these shortfalls can be filled only by diverting water from agriculture. Farmers cannot compete economically with industry for water in China. China is developing a grain deficit even with the over-pumping of its aquifers. Grain production in China has been said to have peaked in 1998 at 392 million tons, falling below 350 million tons in 2000, 2001, and 2002, although such was 571 million tons in 2011 after eight consecutive years of increase from 2003 to 2011. The annual deficits have been filled by drawing down the country's extensive grain reserves, and by reliance on the world grain market. Some predict that China will soon become the world's largest importer of grain. Figures from the
United States Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of com ...
(USDA) contradict many claims that the country's wheat supply is unstable. According to USDA, in 2014 China imported 1.5 million tonnes (MT) of wheat, and had relatively small exports of 1 MT. However, China ''produced'' 126 MT of wheat in 2014, according to the same source. For comparison, Egypt was 2014's largest importer, with imports of 10.7 MT. If China had imported more than Egypt, it still would have produced almost 10 times more wheat than it imported, while in fact it produced more than 100 times more.


Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan

In 2022 Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan have restricted exports and levied tariffs on wheat. Higher prices are not meeting any opposition from desperate buyers.


See also

;Other resource peaks


References

{{Peak oil Agricultural economics
Wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeological ...