Feed Bussiness Worldwide: August, 2013
Chinese feed & livestock: A remarkable achievement and an unfinished story
The country's transformation into a feed and livestock superpower has created both opportunities and crisis, but the biggest challenges have yet to come.
by Eric J. BROOKS
With meat consumption rising from 4kg in 1961 to 66kg in 2013, China was, and remains the world's most dynamic, and remarkable, agribusiness market.
Remarkable because a nation with the same arable land area as America, four times as many people and a fraction of its agribusiness sophistication stayed self-sufficient in meat and mostly self-sufficient in feed throughout most of this time, though the latter is giving way.
A remarkable achievement, on US$6,000/year
But not only does the average Chinese on US$6,000 per capita income eat more meat than the Japanese, who enjoy an income 7.8 times higher, two-thirds of this consumption is accounted for by pork. Hence, even though a Chinese citizen eats roughly as much meat annually as Singaporeans (who earn 8.5 times more income per capita), a typical Chinese eats nearly 50% more red meat than the average Singaporean. This very fast, three-decade transformation in the way Chinese eat carried with it huge implications, both for China and the rest of the world.
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