Proceedings of the 13 th Meeting of the
COMCEC Agriculture Working Group
8
of 31% in 2000 to 53 % in 2015 while the one for OIC showed an increase from 16 to 54 % during
the same period.
Prof. KASNAKOĞLU expressed that almost one third of all agricultural area and over one fifth of the
arable area in the world are in OIC member countries. While for Africa and Asia total land and
agricultural land shares in OIC are similar, for Arab group, share in OIC agricultural land is lower
than share in total land.
Regarding the renewable water potential in the OIC by sub-regions, Prof. KASNAKOĞLU informed
the participants that OIC member countries have 7,261 km3/year of renewable water resources for
the period 2013-2017 that accounts for 13.3% of the world’s total. Taking into account the fact that
OIC member countries have 28% of the world’s total agricultural area, the majority of the member
countries face water scarcity. At the sub-regional level, renewable water resources disperse
unequally in the OIC. Moreover, the ratio of renewable water resources to the agricultural land
varies considerably among its sub-regions. While Asian group has 71% of the renewable water
resources in the OIC, it possesses 9,965 m3/ha renewable water per hectare of agricultural land,
Arab group owns 4 % of renewable water resources with 554 m3/ha renewable water per hectare
of agricultural land.
Prof. KASNAKOĞLU recalled that land productivity is measured as the ratio of agricultural output
value added to the agricultural land area. The OIC land productivity reached to a point of
convergence to the world average in 2014 and surpassed it slightly in 2015. The significant rate of
growth in both OIC and the world in the period of 1995-2015 can be explained by dramatic
increases in agricultural value added while arable land areas remained almost the same in the same
period. He stated that the Arab Group has the highest level of agricultural land productivity. African
group has the lowest land productivity but registered the highest rate of growth in productivity
with more than 2 times over the last two decades. Labor productivity is measured by the ratio of
total agricultural value added to the number of agricultural employment. The OIC labor
productivity started slightly behind the world average in 2000 and caught it in 2005. However
afterwards over the last decade although still on the growth track, it fell below the world average
as a result of relatively higher rates of growth in non-OIC countries.
Prof. KASNAKOĞLU concluded his presentation by giving information on the state of food insecurity
in the OIC Member Countries. Prof. KASNAKOĞLU underlined that, unfortunately, statistics on food
security are available only for 25 of the 57 OIC member countries. They also underestimate food
insecurity, as countries where data is not available face relatively higher levels of hunger. With
these limitations in mind, FAO estimates about 800 million undernourished in the world, slightly
down from over 900 million at the beginning of the millennium. 200 million or about quarter of the
world’s hungry are in the OIC member countries. In the 2014-2016 period, 50% of the OIC’s
undernourished was in the Asian group, followed by the African group with 31% and Arab group
with 19%. Number of undernourished in Asia fell over the last 15 years but those in the Arab and
African groups have increased.
Questions and Remarks
Question: What are the key reasons for productivity differences among the OIC groups?
Answer: Prof. KASNAKOĞLU underlined that, in terms of statistics that were presented in his
presentation, the most difficult statistics were on productivity. He mentioned that the reasons for
productivity differences among the OIC groups have been provided in the Outlook Report in detail.
In productivity measures, we have two factors: one factor in the numerator and the other factor in
denominator. In terms of land productivity, since land is not changing much, differences are