From: abulsari@abo.fi (Abhay Bulsari VT)
Subject: Sufficiency of food
Organization: Abo Akademi University
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 11:40:11 GMT

Thanks to Michael Traub for this article.

[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.


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