February 15, 2016

15/02/2016: Commodities: China’s agricultural challenges

https://issuu.com/gfmt/docs/mag1511_w1/72
Suwei Jiang, PwC Partner, China Business Group and Richard Ferguson, Agriculture Advisor to PwC

First published in Milling and Grain, November 2015  


China’s rapid economic growth
Since reforms began some four decades ago, the world’s attention has been focused on China’s rapid economic growth. However, until recently, little attention outside China has been devoted to understanding the agricultural industry that has effectively fuelled the workforce that has underpinned the country’s economic miracle of recent decades. Still, less has been devoted to the increasingly urgent question of how the country will meet its future nutritional needs.

Produced jointly by PwC China Business Group and Agribusiness team, this two-part report highlights the importance of this topic and the most significant of the challenges and opportunities presented by China’s evolving agricultural and nutritional needs. We will carry a second report in our December edition to cover constraints, the government and agricultural sector. Milling and Grain wish to thank PwC and the authors in particular for sharing their report with our readers.

China’s agricultural challenges – roads to be travelled

The average Chinese eats some 57kg of meat a year, an increase of 11kg from 2003 when some 46kg per person was consumed. If Chinese meat consumption mirrors other developed Chinese societies over time, we can assume Taiwan’s current 74kg consumption is a realistic long-term extrapolation. To satisfy this increased consumption, China will require an additional 94 million tonnes of corn and soybeans for feedstock. In turn, this will require an additional 15 million hectares of agricultural land – an area the size of England and Wales – which China simply does not have.

Increasing meat consumption has manifested itself in China losing its near self-sufficiency in soybeans – a key feedstock. While it was barely self-sufficient in the 1970s and 1980s, from the late 1990s, Chinese imports of soybeans have steadily increased and now represent 87 percent of consumption.

Read the full article in Milling and Grain HERE.  
               
 

The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine GFMT
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.


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