The diseases of affluence are beginning to take over from the diseases of poverty. China is seeing a shift from undernutrition to such problems as heart disease partly caused by a rich, high-fat diet. China is trying to increase the consumption of traditional protein-rich products like soy through education, but it s not working too well. The general demand is for meat and other animal products, says Geissler. Now that trade in food is freer, the government has less control.
Farmers are freer to produce what they want.
To complicate matters, countries like China have a mixture of poor and better-off communities, containing both undernourished and overnourished people. So targeted policies are needed, says Geissler. Meating Demand Increases in demand have been met largely by substantial growth in livestock production in developing countries. Meat production grew 5.4 percent annually between the early 1980s and early 1990s, a rate almost five times the developed-country average of 1.1 percent. Although per capita meat production in developing countries is still only a little more than a fourth of the developed-country average, the developing world supplies almost half the world s meat.