World agriculture towards 2030/2050: the 2012 revision - Fao

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general thrust towards rapidly growing consumption of meat, e.g. several countries in the
regions East Asia and Near East/North Africa. Brazil is an example of fast growth in all
aspects of the meat economy, with significant increases in production, consumption and
exports of beef, poultry and pork.
Buoyancy of meat trade in recent years. The rapid growth in consumption of several
countries was supported by even faster growth in trade. Some drastic changes occurred in the
sources of exports and destination of imports. For example, Japan increased per capita meat
consumption from 29 kg in 1979/81 to 45 kg in 2005/07, an increase of 2.3 million tonnes.
All this increase was met by imports, which grew almost 6-fold over the period, while
production remained essentially constant. Another major developed importer is the Russian
Federation. On the side of the developing countries, the major importers are Mexico, Hong
Kong, Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Korea. The major developing exporters include
Brazil which has become the largest world exporter by increasing net exports more than 10fold
since the early 1990s; followed by Argentina. The major developed exporters are the
United States of America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the EU.
Dairy products. The growth of world milk production and consumption 47 has been less
buoyant than that of meat. World per capita consumption is currently 83 kg, up from 77 kg 30
years ago. All of the increase in per capita consumption came from the developing countries
(from 37 kg to 52 kg), with China playing a major role in the last few years. The developing
countries continue to have per capita consumption well below that of the industrial countries
(partly reflecting the consumption habits of East Asia, though this is changing rather rapidly,
as well as low incomes and poverty in many other countries), but they are gradually reducing
the distance, although not all countries/regions are participating in these increases (Table 2.5).
Consumption in Asia (both South and East Asia) grew the fastest and accounts for a good part
of the gains in the developing countries (Table 3.5). The lack of progress in continuing to
raise per capita consumption and reversal of past gains in many countries, particularly in sub-
Saharan Africa and the Near East/ North Africa region, is partly associated with the levelling
off in the 1980s and subsequent reduction of subsidized exports from the EU.
47 In our data system all dairy products (e.g. cheese, milk powder, etc, but excluding butter which is part of the
animal fats in the food balance sheets) are converted into liquid milk equivalent. Perhaps these conversions of
data for so many final products are partly responsible for the fact that the world trade shows a large statistical
discrepancy for 2005/07 (Table 3.5), with world exports being 91000 thousand tons and imports 85000.
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