Meat for food is an import policy option

May 13, the China Agricultural Industry Development Report 2019 was released in Beijing. Mei Xurong, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said at the press conference that the report concluded that "meat for food" will become an option in China's import policy, even as uncertainty over the instability of international agricultural trade remains prominent and the risks and difficulties faced by China's agricultural industry grow significantly.
report, from a food security perspective, the increase in net pork imports will reduce the demand for feed grains such as rice, wheat, maize and soybean meal. Estimates show that when China's pork imports increase from 1.55 million tons to 4.96 million tons, net grain imports will be reduced by 13.39 million tons, and the self-se ratio will increase from 83.5 percent to 85 percent.
From the international market, the world pork trade volume is on the rise, the distribution of the main import and export countries is more scattered, China's pork import market concentration is relatively low, the import source countries are scattered, China's increase in pork imports has a certain international market space. By contrast, the external dependence of soybeans, one of the feed sources, increased from 16.3 per cent in 1997 to 87.2 per cent in 2017, with imports highly concentrated in Brazil, the United States and Argentina.
report, from the ecological environment benefits, "meat for food" can effectively reduce domestic pig farming pollution emissions. Regardless of greenhouse gas emissions such as methane from pig farming, imports of 4.96 million tons of pork are equivalent to 3.807 million tons of chemical oxygen demand (COD), 353,000 tons of total nitrogen (TN) and 50,000 tons of whole phosphorus (TP) remaining abroad, taking into account the Manual of the First National Pollutant Census on Sewage Production and Emissions in Livestock and Poultry Farming. If all pig culture dung pollution is treated by water-flushing dung process, 4.96 million tons of pork will produce sewage equivalent to 20.1% of the total national chemical oxygen demand emissions in 2017, 7.0% of the total total nitrogen emissions, and 22.2% of the total total phosphorus emissions. 7%, if treated entirely using dry manure treatment, 4.96 million tons of pork emissions equivalent to 4.0% of the country's total chemical oxygen demand emissions in 2017, 4.4% of total nitrogen emissions and 3.3% of total total phosphorus emissions.
the report also proposed to strictly control the impact of pork imports on the domestic pig farming industry chain, appropriately increase the import of beef and mutton.
To this end, Zhu Ling, a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that under the condition of resource endowment in China, the policy choice of meat-for-food is very correct, and the policy behavior that should be continued is to choose a policy suitable for the Chinese people - to promote free trade.
Huang Jijun, director of Peking University's New Rural Development Research Institute, stressed that there should be a weight on the issue of importing livestock products to replace imported feed and balancing relations.
, public data show that the value added of agriculture as a percentage of GDP in 2017 was only 7.9%. The report re-estimates the real contribution of China's agricultural industry development to the national economy from the perspective of the value chain of agricultural industry, based on the international agricultural statistics practice.
study found that in 2017, the value added of China's agricultural-food system accounted for 23.3% of GDP, and the agricultural-food system consisted mainly of agro-processing industry (7.3% of GDP), intermediate inputs (3.16% of GDP), business and transport services (2.1% of GDP), accommodation and catering (2.8% of GDP). Mei Xurong believes that this fully proves that the agricultural basic industry as a strategic backyard, must play a good role in the ballast stone and "stabilizer."