Who_Will_Feed_China..doc

WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE Who Will Feed China:Wake-Up Call for a Small Planetby Lester R. Brown worldwatch@worldwatch.org CHINAS IMPORT NEEDS DRIVING UP WORLD GRAIN PRICES Within a span of two years, China has gone from being a net grain exporter of 8 million tons to being a net importer of 16 million tons. Chinas overnight emergence as a leading importer of grain, second only to Japan, is driving up world grain prices, promising to raise food prices everywhere, the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental research institute, said in a study released today. The new book, Who Will Feed China? Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet, by Lester R. Brown, shows that despite this 24-million- ton shift in its trade balance and the release of grain from government stocks the supply failed to keep up with the soaring demand for grain. As a result, grain prices climbed nearly 60 percent in 1994. There is no precedent by which to assess the extraordinary growth in the demand for food that is occurring in China today, says Brown. Over the last four years, the economy has grown at double-digit rates--13 percent in 1992, 13 percent in 1993, 11 percent in 1994, and an estimated 10 percent in 1995. During this period, the economy has expanded by 56 percent. Allowing for population growth of 1.1 percent per year, this means that incomes for 1.2 billion people have gone up by half in four years! This study, funded by the Curtis and Edith Munson Foundation, says that as incomes rise, the Chinese people are quickly diversifying their diet, shifting from heavy dependence on a starchy staple, such as rice, to one that contains more livestock products. Consumption of pork has climbed from 7 million tons in 1978, the year economic reforms were launched, to 30 million tons in 1994, making China the worlds leading consumer of red meat. Consumption of poultry, including chicken and duck, has climbed from 3.2 million tons in 1990 to 6.6 million tons in 1994, more than do