March 8, 2010

China to become major pork importer

 

China will soon face a dilemma of purchasing either grains or grain-fed meat, and it is likely the economic powerhouse will choose the latter.

The increasingly urbanised China has 7% of the world's land and 22% of the world population, and the country must choose to either import grains or grain-fed meat. As it is costly to import grains, the country will likely choose to import meat instead, especially pork, the most-consumed meat in China, according to Dr Dermot Hayes, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

History shows that government resistance to importing meat never succeeds because citizens will demand access to less-expensive imported meat, especially if it is of better quality than the domestic product, said Hayes.

China will also need to push its domestic pork production to a commercial scale, as most pork in China is produced on very small farms, said Hayes. Farms as small as 1-9 head (with over 101.9 million farms) produce 52.9% of the country's pork.

However, a switch to commercial-scale production will be limited by a lack of grain producing capacity, which will favour import policies that provide consumers access to US pork, said Hayes.

This has occurred in land-scare nations such as Japan and South Korea, he said.