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China: the soyabean-pork dilemma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2007

Catherine Geissler
Catherine Geissler*
Affiliation:
Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, King's College London, Campden Hill Road, London W8 7AH, UK
*
Corresponding author: Professor Catherine Geissler, fax +44 (0)171 333 4185, email catherine.geissler@kcl.ac.uk
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Abstract

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In 1996 the population of China reached 1.23 billion, 22 % of the world population, and is expected to increase to 1.5 billion by 2020. As China has only 7 % of the world's arable land such population increases are likely to have an important impact on food supply in China and the world. Projections of the potential impact are discussed. The restructuring of Chinese agriculture at the end of the 1970s has led to dramatic increases in agricultural production and food consumption, in particular of animal products, fruit and vegetables. Along with these rapid changes there is evidence of a nutrition transition in which diseases associated with affluence are becoming more prevalent than deficiency diseases. This transition has led to concern about the evolving dietary pattern. The replacement of legumes, including soyabean, by meat and other animal products as rich sources of protein and other nutrients has been controversially argued on grounds of nutritional health, ecological impact, economic effects and world food supply. These arguments are reviewed and the pressures internal and external to China concerning the production and consumption of animal v. legume products are presented. It is concluded that nutritional policies to promote the consumption of soyabean are unlikely to be effective in the context of an increasingly free and global market.

Keywords

ChinaFood supplyAnimal productsLegumesSoyabean
Type
International and Public Health Group Symposium on ‘Feeding the world in the future’
Information
Proceedings of the Nutrition Society , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , May 1999 , pp. 345 - 353
Copyright
Copyright © The Nutrition Society 1999

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