Much has been written recently on the food demands of China. With
1.2 billion people, any change in Chinese diet can become a monumental
supply problem. Other east Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, Malaysia)
that have developed rapidly in the last few decades have acquired different
dietary patterns in the process of transforming to a more industrialized
society. One notable change is the rise in consumption of meat,
principally beef. It has been speculated that the Chinese demand for beef
will be difficult to supply if China follows the same dietary shift during
its impending economic transformation. To put this issue in perspective, I
offer a few simple calculations.
A calf destined for beef production is weaned at a weight of about 500 lbs and is fed a diet of corn, protein supplement and roughage until it reaches slaughter weight of about 1150 lb. Corn typically comprises 85% of this diet. During this fattening period the animal will consume an average of 21 lbs of feed (dry matter) per day and experience a daily gain in weight of about 3.0 lbs in an efficient US feedlot. These numbers indicate that it takes 6.0 lbs of corn (dry matter) to create a lb of beef on the hoof (21 x 0.85 / 3.0). When the 1150-lb animal is slaughtered, it yields a carcass weighing about 715 lbs, of which 75% or 540 lbs can be used for ground beef.
A bushel of corn weighs 56 lbs (approximately 48 lbs of dry matter). The 540 lbs of ground beef produced by the animal is achieved by feeding it 3,900 lbs (650 x 6.0) or 81 bushels (3,900/48) of corn. Stated another way, 1 bushel of corn produces 6.7 lbs of ground beef (540 / 81).
In 1996, Iowa produced 1.718 billion bushels of corn, 18.5% of the US total, with a very good yield of 138.0 bushels per acre. At 6.7 lbs of beef per bushel of corn, the Iowa crop translates into 11.5 billion lbs of ground beef, or 46 billion MacDonalds Quarter Pounders. This translates into 38 Quarter Pounders per year (46/1.2) for every Chinese, or about one every 10 days. For comparison, net US exports (total exports - imports) of red meat and poultry in 1996 were 5.2 billion lbs.
These calculations are quite conservative, since they do not consider the nutritional requirements of the breeding stock nor raising the feeder calf to the weaning weight of 500 lb. One cow, on average, produces 0.9 slaughter animals per year. The feed requirements of the cow are comparable to those of the slaughtered animal, except the cow is usually fed much more roughage and much less corn. For the sake of calculation, if the cow's nutritional requirements were met with corn, the production of ground beef per bushel of corn would be only 3.3 lbs and the Iowa crop would translate into 5.7 billion lbs of ground beef, or one Quarter Pounder every 19 days for each Chinese. If the average Chinese had demanded his/her Quarter Pounder every week in 1996 and beef breeding stock had been fed corn, the Chinese demand would have taken over half of the US corn crop in 1996. By contrast, total US corn exports in 1996 were only 30% of domestic production.
A benchmark of providing one Quarter Pounder per Chinese citizen per week (12.6 lbs per year) requires 16 billion lbs of beef per year (3 times the total US net exports of beef, mutton, pork, and poultry in 1996). At 540 lbs of ground beef produced per year per animal, we need approximately 28 million animals raised for slaughter and another 28 million cows, or over half a million per county if we raise them all in Iowa.
Cattle eat about 20 times as much as humans and produce about 20 times the amount of body waste. If we treated animal sewage like human sewage, we would need a sewage treatment system with a capacity four and a half times the aggregate of sewage treatment plants in the entire US.
These numbers are presented to give a perspective on the magnitude of the Chinese market and the impact of even slight changes in Chinese dietary patterns.
References
Iowa State University Extension Service, 1997: Facts on Iowa Agriculture.
Trenkle, Allen: Biological efficiency and relative competitiveness of beef, pork, and poultry production. Animal Science Department, Iowa State University. 13 pp.