Peak wheat

rdf:langString Peak wheat

rdf:langString Peak wheat is the concept that agricultural production, due to its high use of water and energy inputs, is subject to the same profile as oil and other fossil fuel 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 factors for agricultural commodities (e.g., changing diets in the emerging economies, biofuels, declining acreage under irrigation, growing global population, stagnant agricultural productivity growth), some commentators are predicting a long-term annual production shortfall of around 2% which, based on the highly inelastic demand curve 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, global per capita food production has been increasing substantially for the past several decades.