Future Grain Consumption Trends and Implications on Grain Security in China

Abstract

Associated with population and income growth, grain consumption in China is expected to increase, and thus has inevitably influenced the food security. Using statistical data of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) from 1978 to 2017, this study adopting the vector auto-regression (VAR) model and implied demand approach, projected the future consumption of major grains (rice, wheat, maize, and soybean) for food, feed, and other uses in China during 2018–2030. On this basis, it further discussed their implications on grain security. The results showed that during 2018–2030, the Chinese dietary structure would continue to shift from food grain to animal foods. As a result, the grain’s food consumption will decrease slightly (1.5%), while the feed consumption will increase significantly (31.4%), contributing 71.4% to the total increase of grain consumption. By 2030, the total grain consumption will increase by 20.2% to 846.2 million tons, of which 50.2% will be consumed for feeding animals. In the total consumption, maize will be the largest consumed grain variety, accounting for 39.2%. The security of rice and wheat would be optimistic in the future, while the security of maize and soybeans is likely to decline, and thus needs to be given high priority. These findings have great policy implications for improving the grain security, suggesting that in addition to promote the expansion of maize and soybean growing area by adjusting the cropping structure of the arable land, great efforts should be paid to improve the yield of both crops. In addition, residents should be guided to adjust the dietary structure, and also, it is important to improve the animal feeding efficiency.

Asymmetric Exchange Rate Pass-Through in Southeast Asian Rice Trade

“…The elasticities are significant, and suggest rice is an inferior good in China (consistent with the findings in Peterson et al, 1991). The strong growth of the middle class, rising about 775% from about 80 million in 2002 to about 700 million by 2019 (Statista, 2019) and increasing urbanization could be the reason rice has become an inferior good (Chen and Lu, 2019). Middle-class consumers may prefer meat over rice.…”

Spatial distribution and driving factors determining local food and feed self‐sufficiency in the eastern regions of China

“…According to the NBS, National Bureau of Statistics (2018), the proportion of total production of wheat, rice, and maize accounted for 98.5% of the total cereal production at the national level, while other cereals (e.g., millet and barley) accounted for only 1.5%. In 2017, only 3.5% of maize and 5.1% of soybeans were used as food for people in China (Chen & Lu, 2019).…”

Forecasting China's Food Grain Demand 2021-2050 with Attention to Balanced Dietary and Fertility Policies

“…Using the estimates provided in table 6, the demand for food grain with a balanced diet in China during 2021-2050 under the three fertility scenarios (sgds) can be estimated with equation ( 9); If the SPCC method was not applied, equation ( 10) was traditionally used to estimate the food grain demand with a balanced diet. If the actual dietary structure was kept in scenario s, the food grain demand agds was estimated with equation (11). The results are shown in table 7.…”

“…Meeting the demand for foods has always been the core of China's agricultural policy (Sheng and Song, 2019). China has made remarkable progress in achieving rapid growth in grain production since 1978 (Huang et al, 1999;Chen and Lu, 2019). In 2007, China's grain output reached a level of 500 million tons compared to 305 million tons in 1978, and the self-sufficiency percentage was more than 95%.…”