…Accusing China, India and other developing nations of eating too much meat is more a way for their critics to seek psychological rectitude rather than economic sense … if not an attempt to fend off criticism of costly and unsustainable grain-based biofuel programs…

Looking behind the global food crisis

You Nuo and Wu Jiao

China Daily

2008-07-29 07:35

They are neither food writers nor reporters covering the agricultural sector.

But many say they are particularly interested in how people in other countries eat.

Reports from the Western media on the global food situation, of developing countries not "eating responsibly", have been raising the ire of Chinese and other experts, who have provided statistics to refute such claims.

A recent argument from the West claims that developing nations are consuming more food and driving up grain prices.

China and India, as the two most populous developing countries, have borne the brunt of these attacks.

But official statistics and independent analysis have shown that Chinese demand has not affected global food prices, experts have said.

They say that the allegations from the West contain three fallacies:

China's grain demand has not directly affected the global market, because most of its supply is domestic.

Although the Chinese have been eating more meat, they have also been eating less grain.

As meat consumption in China is on the rise, the nation's consumption of vegetables has also gone up, illustrating a trend that many of the country's critics have been ignoring.

Self-reliance

While the Chinese people have consumed more grain consisting mostly of rice, wheat and corn, experts have said the country has remained more than 90 percent dependent on domestic supply these past years.

For the last five years, its dependence on domestic supplies has been above 95 percent, figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) have showed.

That means China relies on imports for only a fraction of its total grain consumption, no matter how much more it "eats", experts said.

As early as the 1980s, when the rural cottage industry started to flourish in China, Dwight Perkins, a Harvard professor on Chinese economy and agriculture, told his Chinese audience that the country could never afford to follow the development strategy of Japan and South Korea.

Industry took off in both countries when the two countries' grain output declined, Perkins had maintained. In the end, it declined so much that both countries had to become net grain importers.

With its immense population and demand, China cannot afford a similar change, Perkins had said. The global grain market cannot afford to have such a large nation depend on it for most of its supplies, he told China Daily then.

In its pursuit of market-oriented reform, China has thus had no choice but to try and maintain a considerable level of self-reliance on grain, while introducing more market forces into its economy.

The meat of it

With China and India reportedly consuming more meat, the Western press has said that - quoting analysts who have said that it takes up to 8 kg of grain to produce 1 kg of meat - higher meat consumption would naturally require more grain for animal feed.

The case is also said to be true of dairy products and beer.

But experts have shot back at this claim, saying that people tend to eat less grain as they consume more meat.

In the last 30 years, Chinese per capita consumption of grain, or direct consumption, has been on a steady decline, NBS figures showed.

The urban per capita consumption of meat and milk, which many consider as the overall consumer trend of rural residents, have shown that the per capita decline in grain consumption in the country stands at 55 kg, closely matching the amount of grain required by the increase of 7 kg of meat consumption in 2006 over what was eaten in 1990.

Greens guise

The production of fruits and vegetables is considered to be different from producing meat and dairy goods. One main difference is that vegetables and fruits do not need grain as raw material, experts have said.

Consumers' standard of living is not calculated based on having more meat and milk, they said.

The middle class in developing countries has also been eating more fruit and vegetables as a lifestyle choice, NBS figures showed.

After a dip in the 1980s, urban sales of vegetables saw a rise since 2000. The sale of fruit have also been consistently rising since the 1980s, NBS figures showed.

As Chinese people eat better foods, they are not just eating meat and drinking more milk, they are also eating more vegetables and more fruits, experts said.

Figures of urban per capita consumption of non-grain items show that the increase in fruit consumption has doubled over the past 16 years. While urbanites consumed more milk during that time, the average per capita milk consumption of the whole country also stands at 13.5 kg, only one-fifth of the world average.

The ethanol connection

Experts have said there is ample evidence to show that the current round of inflation in food prices is not so much a result of developing nations' rising consumption, but rather a by-product of developed nations' pursuit of grain-based biofuels.

The International Monetary Foundation (IMF) has warned that an increasing global reliance on grain as a source of fuel could drive up food prices in poor countries.

"The use of food as a source of fuel may have serious implications for the demand for food if the expansion of biofuels continues," the IMF said in its twice-yearly report on the world economy, issued last October.

Similarly, a World Bank report based on a detailed analysis of the food crisis and conducted by senior economist Don Mitchell has showed that biofuels have forced world food prices up by 75 percent.

"Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases," the Guardian quoted the leaked World Bank report earlier this month.

The 75-percent figure sharply contradicted claims by the US government, that biofuels contribute less than 3 percent to food price hikes.

The report argued that the European Union and US drive for biofuels has by far the largest impact on food supply and prices.

The use of agricultural products, in particular maize, wheat, and vegetable oil, as feedstock for biofuel production has expanded dramatically in recent years, Stefan Tangermann, director of the Trade and Agriculture of the OECD, wrote in an article recently posted on policy analysis portal www.voxeu.com.

Between 2005 and last year, the period when food prices began to spike, nearly 60 percent of the growth in global consumption of cereals and vegetable oils was due to biofuels, figures showed.

More specifically, experts have said that biofuels in North America and Europe cannot be produced, and would be very little used in the absence of government support such as subsidies, tax breaks and tariffs - policies to support biofules, experts say, that have contributed greatly to the rise in global food prices.

Accusing China, India and other developing nations of eating too much meat is more a way for their critics to seek psychological rectitude rather than economic sense, experts have said, if not an attempt to fend off criticism of costly and unsustainable grain-based biofuel programs.

chinadaily.com.cn

China releases biotech rice, bars biofuel to protect food supply

By Dennis T. Avery**

Source: NewsByUs.Com

July 29, 2008

via: CheckBiotech

China says short world grain supplies have persuaded it to release biotech rice nationwide, ensuring the broadest-ever use of genetic engineering in a food crop. Chinese plant breeders say biotech crops are certain to produce higher yields, forestalling the need to finance costly rice imports for China’s billion-plus consumers.

To further protect its grain supplies, China has also been discouraging grain-based ethanol for the last two years. Chinese demand for grain ethanol - mainly from corn - had threatened to inflate prices for China’s rice and livestock products as world oil prices hit record levels.

These strategies may quickly become the model for developing countries as the world strives to double food and feed production over the next three decades - with or without biofuels.

Western biofuel mandates have, unfortunately, more than doubled world grain prices since 2005. Corn costs have soared from less than $2 per bushel to more than $7, before settling recently at about $5.50 per bushel. Pork, poultry, beef, and milk producers are still warning of further food price inflation ahead due to biofuels mandates.

The Chinese have already developed genetically engineered rice strains with bred-in pest and disease resistance. They’re also experimenting with new nitrogen-efficient rice that needs only half as much fertilizer to get top yields. The new rice thus costs much less to grow, and emits far less greenhouse gas per ton of rice produced. They also say biotech rice “escapes” will not be a problem, since they’ve pre-programmed the rice to be hyper-sensitive to a particular herbicide.

China already permits the growing of genetically engineered peppers, tomatoes, and papaya, and much of its huge cotton crop is genetically modified to resist pests. Biotech has overcome the deadly ringspot virus, which severely hampers papaya production in much of the world, and provided virus resistance for tomatoes and peppers. Another genetic modification permits Chinese tomatoes to survive the longer shipping delays caused by the poor Chinese roads and lack of refrigeration.

The nitrogen-efficient biotech rice being tested by the Chinese emerged at Canada’s University of Alberta, as breeders were seeking drought-tolerant crops. Someone forgot to fertilize the seeds in the greenhouse, but one set of plants grew vigorously anyhow. They had discovered a new and more efficient pathway for crop nitrogen uptake that allows top yields with half the nitrogen fertilizer.

Arcadia Biosciences is marketing the nitrogen-efficient crops, working with Chinese rice growers and Australian wheat growers and is working to develop the new nitrogen efficiency in corn. Arcadia has already signed a licensing agreement with the Maharashtra Seed Company in India, the world’s second-most-populous country.

Greenpeace claims that rice smuggled from biotech experimental fields has already been sold on consumer markets without government approval, and perhaps even exported. However, with world rice prices recently hitting record highs, no one has seemed to care.

The question today is how to produce adequate food, with cropland per person declining. In addition, fertilizer prices have been sharply inflated by the conversion of power plants to burn much of the natural gas which used to supply fertilizer factories.

World leaders are also welcoming the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s major effort to create a renewed Green Revolution to create the first high-yield farming in sub-Saharan Africa, supply the last surge of human population growth worldwide, and provide higher-quality diets for the tropical countries.

**DENNIS T. AVERY is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC and is the Director for the Center for Global Food Issues. (http://www.cgfi.org) He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years.

Source: Dennis T. Avery

Source: NewsByUs.Com

greenbio.checkbiotech.org