How Much Beef Consumed in China 2010

April 24, 2012

Meat Consumption in Cathay Now Double That in the U.s.a.

More than a quarter of all the meat produced worldwide is now eaten in China, and the country'southward 1.35 billion people are hungry for more. In 1978, China'south meat consumption of 8 million tons was one third the U.S. consumption of 24 million tons. But by 1992, China had overtaken the United States as the world's leading meat consumer—and it has not looked back since. Now China'south annual meat consumption of 71 million tons is more than double that in the United States. With U.S. meat consumption falling and People's republic of china's consumption even so ascent, the trajectories of these two countries are determining the shape of agriculture around the planet.

Pork is Mainland china'southward meat of choice, accounting for nearly 3 fourths of its meat consumption. Half the earth's pigs—some 476 1000000 of them—alive in China. This meat is so central to the Chinese nutrition that in 2007 the government, hoping to cushion against price spikes, created a strategic pork reserve (albeit a relatively modest i) to accompany its more typical stockpiles of grain and petroleum. Many a Chinese feast table is graced with a portion of glutinous sweet braised pork belly, touted to exist the favorite dish of Chairman Mao. With its pork consumption projected to reach 52 1000000 tons in 2012, China is far ahead of the 8 million tons eaten in the United States, where craven and beef are more popular. (See data.)

On a per person ground, Americans ate more than pork than the Chinese until 1997, when the lines crossed and Red china pushed ahead. Over the past v years, per capita pork consumption in the Usa has fallen on average 2 percentage a twelvemonth, while that in Cathay has grown by over 3 per centum a year despite cost increases. At present the Chinese each eat an average of 84 pounds (38 kilograms) of pork in a yr, while Americans average 59 pounds.

Traditionally Cathay's pigs were raised in small numbers past households feeding them ingather waste matter and table scraps. Equally many American kitchens today have a garbage disposal, Chinese kitchens had a sus scrofa. Indeed, the written Mandarin Chinese character for "dwelling house" depicts a squealer nether a roof, signifying the creature'south longtime domestic importance. Just now the ramped-up demands of a richer and increasingly urbanized lodge take taken more pigs out of the backyard and into specialized livestock operations, where they are fed grain and soybeans.

Poultry production in China—virtually non-existent prior to 1978—is as well becoming more industrialized. While chicken flocks in the United States began to multiply chop-chop following Globe War Two, flocks in China started their expansion some 20 years afterwards and accept grown twice as fast. Chinese chicken consumption is fix to exceed thirteen meg tons in 2012, mark the first time that more than chicken will be eaten in Mainland china than in the U.s.a.. Yet, on boilerplate, Americans eat 4 times more chicken per person.

For beef, Communist china's 6-million-ton consumption compares with 11 million tons in the United States. Americans, with their stereotypical burgers and steaks, each eat an boilerplate of 79 pounds of beef a year, nearly ix times more the Chinese boilerplate. Beefiness production has non taken off as apace in China equally other meats have, in function due to its higher cost and to competing claims on grazing land.

The other prime reason that beef has non become as popular in Cathay is that cattle in feedlots gobble up virtually vii pounds of grain for each pound of weight gain. For pigs, the feeding ratio is iii to one, and for chickens information technology is 2 to one. With one fifth of the world'south population and limited state and h2o supplies, Cathay has had to rely heavily on the more-efficient forms of animal protein. This has led to China's huge farmed fish output of 37 million tons, which accounts for over 60 percent of the earth total. For comparison, U.S. aquacultural output is less than one-half a 1000000 tons. Farmed fish in ponds, particularly the herbivorous species like carp that are popular in China, require even less feed than chickens do.

While rice is an essential component of many a Chinese meal, Prc's largest grain crop actually is corn, with 192 million tons harvested in 2011. Corn is so prominent because it dominates feed rations for livestock, poultry, and fish. The 140-million-ton rice harvest, largely from the southern function of the country, and most of the 118-million-ton wheat crop from the north are eaten straight past people or cooked into noodles, buns, dumplings, and other foods.

Altogether, Mainland china harvested the largest grain crop of any land in history in 2011. A total one third of that harvest is going to feed animals to see the growing demand for meat, milk, eggs, and farmed fish. Since the agricultural policy reforms of 1978, Mainland china'southward feedgrain use has shot up more than ninefold. In 2010, China replaced the United States as the world's number ane feedgrain user.

Along with grain, the other component in typical livestock rations is the soybean. China overtook the United States in the amount of soybean repast fed to animals in 2008, only it was non able to do so without help from the outside earth. In 1995 Red china produced some 14 1000000 tons of soybeans and also consumed 14 million tons. By 2011 China still produced 14 1000000 tons of soybeans—merely information technology consumed seventy million tons.

Now more than threescore per centum of globe soybean exports, virtually all from the U.s., Brazil, and Argentina, go to Mainland china. Mainland china'due south incredible appetite for meat has altered the landscape of the western hemisphere, where the state planted in soybeans now exceeds that in either wheat or corn. Rainforest and savanna have been cleared to make way for a vast soybean monoculture.

The Chinese government has had to await overseas to run into its burgeoning demand for soy because of its policy of maintaining grain cocky-sufficiency. When global grain prices spiked in 2007–08, many people pointed to Red china, saying that its growing meat consumption must have raised demand enough to crusade the leap. But because Prc was nearly entirely cocky-sufficient in grain, other culprits had to be found. (The large i turned out to exist the U.S. ethanol manufacture, which now devours 30 percent of the U.Southward. grain crop.)

Since then, however, China has started to plough to the earth market for grain, importing a cyberspace vii meg tons in 2011. If Chinese meat consumption continues to ascent fast, its feed imports will soar higher, taking international nutrient prices upwardly with them. Already the U.S. Grains Council is saying that China could soon supplant Japan as the world's top corn importer.

Per person meat consumption in China now is one-half the amount in the United States. For China to reach American per capita levels with beef would accept over 3 fourths of current world beef output. For chicken it would require 80 percent of the earth's broiler chickens. And China is not the only state trying to movement upwards the food chain. Withal even as billions of people across the developing earth with little meat in their diets are trying to eat more, Americans are starting to cut back. Total U.South. meat consumption dropped 6 percent between 2007 and 2012. Ultimately, feeding the global population of 7 billion and counting will crave meeting somewhere in the heart.

Janet Larsen is the Managing director of Research for the Earth Policy Plant.

Copyright © 2012 Earth Policy Institute

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Source: http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2012/update102

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