From: abulsari@aton.abo.fi
Subject: Self sufficiency of food
Organization: Abo Akademi University
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 07:52:06 GMT


I got this from Michael Traub.

[Here are a few excerpts on the topic of food self-sufficiency from
 "Taking Stock: Animal Farming and the Environemnt" by Alan Durning
 and Holly Brough, published by the Worldwatch Institute in July 1991.]


   For a poor country where people eat  few animal products,  reaching
self-sufficiency in food grains requires just 200 kilograms of cereals
per person per year.  But that number quickly rises when people switch
from a grain-based diet to a meat-based one.

   Rapidly  industrializing Taiwan, for instance, increased per capita
consumption of meat and eggs six-fold from 1950  to 1990.   To produce
those  animal products required raising annual per capita grain use in
the  country  from  170 kilograms to  390 kilograms.  Despite steadily
growing harvests, Taiwan could only keep  up with the demand  for feed
by turning  to  imports  from abroad.   In  1950, Taiwan  was a  grain
exporter; in 1990, the nation imported, mostly for feed, 74 percent of
the grain it used.

   Mainland   Chinese  are  following   the  Taiwanese   up  the  meat
consumption ladder.  Since  1978,  when  agricultural reforms  boosted
production, meat  consumption has more than  doubled to 24  kilograms.
The  growth  has   been  particularly  marked  in  cities,  where  the
government  has   helped   create  pig  and   poultry   plants   using
Western-style grain-feeding technology.  Though the  country's farmers
have been  able to  grow sufficient  feed grain for  the swelling meat
industry so  far,  few observers  expect them  to keep  pace  for much
longer.   The share of  Chinese grain fed  to  livestock  rose from  7
percent in 1960 to 20 percent in 1990.

   China's  future may  resemble  the  Soviet Union's  present,  where
rising  meat consumption has  created  economic problems.  Since 1950,
meat consumption has tripled and feed  consumption quadrupled.  Use of
grain for feed surpassed direct human consumption in 1964 and has been
rising ever since.  Soviet livestock now eat three times as much grain
as Soviet citizens.  Grain  imports have soared, going from  near zero
in  1970 to 24 million  tons  in 1990,  and  the U.S.S.R.  is  now the
world's second largest grain importer.

   In the Middle East and North Africa, grain-fed livestock operations
are proliferating, boosting the demand for imported feed.  The richest
Middle Eastern countries match Western levels of  meat  consumption by
depending  heavily on imported feed  and  meat.   Egypt,  the  poorest
country in the region, is also a major grain importer,  partly  due to
rising  grain-fed meat  consumption in the cities.  Since 1970,  grain
imports have risen from near zero to 8 million tons per year.

   Middle-income Arab nations, such as Syria,  also  have seen  rising
meat  consumption and soaring feed demand.  The Area  in Syria devoted
to barley for feed increased from 300,000 hectares in 1950 to almost 3
million  hectares  in  1989.   Much  of the expansion occurred  on the
country's dry steppes, which are ecologically suited only for grazing.
Farmers  in  traditional barley-growing areas,  meanwhile, are heeding
government  advice to  plow under soil-conserving  fallow  fields  for
continuous barley cropping.   Yet neither the addition of new land nor
the switch to single-crop production has sufficed to keep up with feed
demand.  Syria, in 1965 a barley exported, now imports the cereal...

   On balance the Third  World exported grain until the early sixties;
by the  late  seventies, it was consistently  importing  cereals.  The
change came  not just from growing populations but also from exploding
livestock industries.  The FAO reports that 75 percent of Third  World
imports of so-called coarse grains -- corn, barley, sorghum, and  oats
-- fed  animals in 1981.  Little  has changed in the decade since.  As
U.S.  Department of Agriculture trade  specialist  Gary Vocke  Writes:
`Imports  of corn  and  sorghum  (for  feed)  have  outpaced  domestic
production,  leading  developing   countries  to  a   lower  level  of
self-sufficiency -- a trend that  will accelerate as livestock feeding
expands in the next 10 years.'

   Higher  meat  consumption among  the  affluent  frequently  creates
problems for  the  poor,  as  the  share of  farmland devoted  to feed
cultivation  expands,  reducing production  of food  staples.   In the
economic competition for grain fields, the upper classes  usually win.
In Egypt,  for  example, over the past quarter-century, corn grown for
animal feed has  taken  over cropland  from  wheat, rice, sorghum, and
millet --  all staple grains  in  Egypt.  The  share  of  grain fed to
livestock rose from 10 percent to 36 percent.