Year

Medium variant

High variant

Low variant

(thousands)

2005

332,245

332,245

332,245

2015

364,334

372,011

356,656

2025

392,978

413,338

372,678

2035

416,777

452,730

382,037

2050

445,303

517,137

381,551

5.2.2 Economics and international trade
Increases in demographic and socioeconomic pressure (in­creases in average income and labor productivity) in society are the main driving forces of technological development in agriculture (Giampietro et al., 1999).
     In 2005, North America  represented  15%  of mer­chandise and 17% of commercial services exports. Europe represented 44%  and 52%, and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) represented 3% and 2% (World Trade Report, 2006).
     The global state of the economy, including gross do­mestic product (GDP), trade related issues and employment has influenced agriculture and AKST. In the next fifty years, the NAE economy will be mostly challenged by the prices of energy and other natural resources and the competition of products from developing countries. NAE's aging popula­tion will generate high expenses and might lead to a short­age of human resources. Currently, the sluggishness of the European economy constitutes a drag on world trade and output growth. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has strong economic growth thanks to the expansion of the energy sector. For the US, the current account deficit is a major question (World Trade Report, 2006).
     The annual World GDP growth rate was 2.8% during 1990-2003 broken down as follows: high-income countries 2.6%, middle-income countries 3.5%, low-income coun­tries 4.7% (World Bank, 2005). This indicates a "catching up" process: the income growth rate is higher for countries with a lower initial GDP level. For the same period, GDP growth in the EU-27 is about 2% per year; this is lower than the growth in other high income countries (EC, 2007).
     Future world income growth will be determined by the growth in production factors (labor, capital, land) and the productivity growth of these factors. Continued economic growth is expected over the coming period in almost all re-

gions of the world. This growth will be considerably higher for most of the transitional and developing countries than for the EU-15, the United States and Japan, in particular for Brazil, China, India and the new EU Member States (EC, 2007). In the United States, public debt levels are expected to increase over the next twenty years due to significant increases in public expenditures on health care (OECD, 1995). In the reference case projections, the U.S. economy stabilizes at its long-term growth path by 2010. GDP is pro­jected to grow by an average of 2.9% per year from 2004 to 2030, slower than the 3.1% annual average over the 1980 to 2004 period, because of the retirement of the baby boom generation and the resultant slowing of labor force growth. Canada's labor force growth is projected to slow in the me­dium to long term, however, as baby boomers retire. The country's overall economic growth is projected to fall from the current average of 2.9% per year to averages of 2.6% per year from 2007 to 2015 and 2.1% per year from 2015 to 2030 (IEO, 2007).
     Over the long term, OECD Europe's GDP is projected to grow by 2.3% per year from 2004 to 2030 in the refer­ence case, in line with what OECD considers to be potential output growth in the region's economies. According to the International Monetary Fund, (IMF) structural impediments to economic growth still remain in many countries of OECD Europe, related to the region's labor markets, product mar­kets, and costly social welfare systems. Reforms to improve the competitiveness of European labor and product markets could yield significant dividends in terms of increases in re­gional output (IEO, 2007).

5.2.3 Sociopolitical drivers
The term "political" refers to factors that are related to pol­itics, that is, to the processes of decision making on public policies at the subnational, national and international level