Analysis on the Changes of Agricultural Product Consumption in China from the Perspective of Food

According to the report of the 18th CPC National Congress, a specific scenario depicts that China will build a well-off society in an all-round way by 2020, and the level of urbanization in China will be close to 70% by 2027. In the middle and later stage of industrialization, it means that people's life is richer and various social undertakings have entered a new stage. one of the important signs is that food consumption will achieve a high level of balance. specifically, animal food consumption will reach a dynamic and stable peak level. In this process, constrained by China's domestic resources, environment and other conditions, on the one hand, we need to make use of two markets and two kinds of resources for our own use. on the other hand, it is necessary to dilute the risk caused by the traditional dependence on feed import, which leads to the concentration of agricultural products import sources. In the long run, the global food market will remain relatively stable, and with technological advances and global productivity improvements, the real prices of agricultural products, including aquaculture products, will tend to decline.

Fast-growing consumption of agricultural products

With the rapid economic growth and the continuous improvement of the income level of urban and rural residents, the total consumption of agricultural products in China is showing a new situation of rapid growth and rapid upgrading of structure.

1. The total consumption of agricultural products is growing rapidly.

From the perspective of food, in the past 30 years, the per capita consumption and total consumption of rations and sugar have basically reached the peak, and the consumption demand of vegetable oil has entered a period of rapid growth and is gradually moving towards the peak. Specifically, the total consumption demand of vegetable oil in China increased from 11 million tons in 1998 to 26 million tons in 2014, with an average annual growth rate of nearly 5.5 percent. Per capita vegetable oil consumption increased from 8.8 kg in 1998 to 19.3 kg in 2014, exceeding the world per capita consumption level of 16 kg and gradually approaching the per capita consumption level of 25 kg in developed countries.

two。 Rapid upgrading of residents' food consumption structure

Thanks to the improvement of economic growth, income and urbanization, the consumption structure of residents' food (the two concepts of food and food in this paper are equivalent) is upgrading rapidly. While the consumption of starch and fiber food is stable, the consumption of animal food is growing rapidly. According to statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2014, China produced 87.07 million tons of meat, 28.94 million tons of poultry eggs, 37.25 million tons of milk, 64.5 million tons of aquatic products, and 218 million tons of meat, eggs and milk. In 1996, the total output of meat, eggs and milk aquatic products in China was 100 million tons, an annual increase of 1.1 times over the past 18 years, but the population increased by only 12% in the same period, and the per capita share of animal protein roughly doubled.

Due to the rapid growth of dynamic food consumption brought about by the upgrading of food consumption structure, the demand for feed grain has increased rapidly. Take corn as an example: from 2003 to 2014, China's corn production increased from 116 million tons to 216 million tons, an increase of 100 million tons, with an average annual growth rate of 6.4 percent; in the same period, domestic corn consumption increased from 117 million tons to 170 million tons, an increase of 45.3 percent, with an average annual growth rate of 3.8 percent. In fact, before 2012, the growth rate of domestic corn consumption has been higher than that of production, making China a net importer of corn; after 2014, the growth rate of corn consumption has declined due to the downturn in total demand, but on the whole, it has not changed the situation of China's net corn importers. In addition, the demand for feed such as sorghum and barley is also growing rapidly.

Calculation of overall consumption

In order to measure the changing characteristics of China's total food consumption, it is necessary to construct an abstract index of total food consumption. This paper uses the relationship among Engel coefficient, income and price to construct a total food consumption index to evaluate the change of overall average food consumption.

Specifically, if it is assumed that a basket of food consumption of urban and rural residents is a whole, this abstract concept of food consumption corresponds to the food consumer price index, and the calculated food consumption index is comparable in time series. If the consumption of urban and rural residents was 100 in 1983, the food consumption index of Chinese residents in 2013 was 295.7, which increased by about 2 times. In the same period, the food index of urban residents increased by 2.6 times from 100 to 362.5, and the food index of rural residents increased by 1.2 times from 100 to 218.1. Overall, the increase of food consumption of urban residents is faster, which not only has the role of income growth, but also has the contribution of urbanization.

From the perspective of calibration index, macro data can be used to make a rough comparison: China's per capita grain output was 376 kg in 1983 and 443 kg in 2013, an increase of 17.8%; China's per capita meat output was 13.6 kg in 1983 and 62.7 kg in 2013, an increase of 360.8%; and China's per capita output of aquatic products was 5.3 kg in 1983 and 45.4 kg in 2013, an increase of 756%. Compared with the food consumption index, meat consumption plays the biggest role in the growth of total food consumption. from the growth data from 1983 to 2013, meat consumption increases by 3.6 times, which is close to the growth of food consumption index. it can be inferred that the weight of meat consumption expenditure accounts for a large share of the overall food consumption index, which is consistent with the actual sensory understanding. It is also in line with the overall trend of the change of food consumption structure in China, that is, the growth of animal food occupies a dominant position.