Who will feed China in 21st Century
This paper is from June this year and was produced by The World Bank Development Research Group’s Agriculture and Rural Development Team. The authors, Ms. Emiko Fukase and Mr. Will Martin, come quickly to the conclusion that China will mostly feed itself in the medium term and they predict a food self-sufficiency ratio of over 90% until 2030 at least.
China has done a good job of developing its agricultural resources and agricultural GDP has grown by 4.6% per annum from 1978 to 2011; that’s 4x the rate of population growth over the same period.
Calorie consumption is almost at first world levels now but the composition of those calories is still in transition away from grains in favor of more protein, especially that of the animal variety. This shift explains the big surge of soy bean imports in recent years and these are an especially efficient crop for China to import as they’re water intensive and it makes little sense for China to grow these themselves.
On page-10 there’s a neat little chart showing the input intensity of different kinds of foods and it highlights neatly how resource intensive cow, goat and sheep meat is. The greener choices are clearly pig, chicken and farmed fish. Or, if you can manage it, just fruit and veg.
The equation is helped by demographics which point to the Chinese population peaking in 2025 at a level only 2.3% higher than today. The authors note in developed markets intensity of food production inputs peaks when household incomes hit around U$40,000 and in some cases, Australia for example, it’s actually been falling.
Although China has only about half the global average of cultivatable land on a per capita basis that’s 4x more than Korea and 5x more than Japan so established import norms for those markets are not a good guide as to where China may be heading.
If you haven’t got time for the full read skip to page-35 where some handy charts begin.
Happy Sunday