Global Food and Feed Production Trends

 The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations provides free access to food and agriculture data for over 245 countries and territories, from the year 1961. One dataset from the FAO's database is the Food Balance Sheets, which I used for this post's analysis It presents a comprehensive picture of the pattern of a country's food supply during a specified reference period, with the most recent update from 2013. The food balance sheet shows for each food item the sources of supply and its utilization. This chunk of the dataset is focused on two utilizations of each food item available:

• Food - refers to the total amount of the food item available as human food during the reference period.
• Feed - refers to the quantity of the food item available for feeding to the livestock and poultry during the reference period

I performed some exploratory analysis to attempt and uncover trends exist within these two types of crop utilization. 

First, as a broad view here we have the entire yields (in 1,000 tons) of both food and feed for the top ten countries over time:

Annual Total Food Production Yields by Country

The countries making up the top ten yields are China, India, USA, Brazil, Russia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Germany, Mexico, and Pakistan respectively. We can also consider the relative proportions of these two types of food or feed purposed crops for these top countries. 

The heavy meat-eating countries like China, USA, Brazil, and Germany all have high percentages of their overall production (20%-35% of total production) devoted to feeding animals to be raised for meat. Lesser meat-eating countries like India, Indonesia, and Pakistan have that ratio much lower at roughly 5%. 

As someone who spends a decent amount of their time coding, I am constantly thinking about efficiency. Allocating roughly a third of a country's total crop production to raising animals that in turn slowly convert the fuel into biomass for future human consumption feels painfully inefficient. Not to mention the additional land, water, time, and fuel expense required to raise and process these animals. The above graph is an aggregation of the entire timeframe considered. How has our production of food, specifically meat, changed overtime? The dataset also includes production of animal products for consumption, and below is the total production (in 1000 tons) for each of the same ten countries from 1961 to 2013.

Clearly, China has increased their meat production dramatically during this timeframe. An obvious hypothesis is that this increase in meat production is directly linked to population increase. This makes intuitive sense: more mouths to feed means more food. However, using World Bank data, when accounting for production per capita, China's meat production is over six times higher per person in 2013 vs 1965. This figure becomes even more interesting when considering its neighbor to the south, India whose population has grown at almost an identical rate over that same time period. 

Annual Population

India's meat production has remained virtually flat during this time of explosive population growth, actually decreasing the meat production per capita. Conversely, the USA has increased the meat production  per capita by roughly 21% from 1965 to 2013. While paling in comparison to the explosive growth seen in China, the 21% increase equates to a whopping 40 pounds of additional meat produced per person in the United States annually. 

For the remainder of this analysis, I'll be focusing in on the USA's production. Taking a step backwards towards the food vs feed discussion, here are the USA's trends for production on both with forecasted values through 2022.  

Interestingly enough, given that our animal meat production has increased so dramatically over this timeframe, the domestic yield of feed for these animals has not seen that same trend. From 1961 to 2013, feed production in the USA has only increased only 14%, lagging behind the 21% meat production increase during that timeframe. Either we are importing feed for our cattle at a much higher rate, or we are getting more 'efficient' at feeding these animals. 

Below, we can dive into which types of meat are driving this growth in meat production in the USA. 

Clearly, Americans have developed quite the appetite for chicken, with production increasing 170% per capita from 1965 to 2013. 

What will the future hold for these trends? Will the world continue to produce more and more meat for consumption above and beyond our gradual population increase? Will India or any other country follow China's striking growth pattern in terms of meat production? If so, can the earth handle it? Currently, One-third of global arable land is used to grow feed, while 26% of the Earth's ice free land is used for animal grazing. Additionally, livestock supply chains account for nearly 15% of all greenhouse gasses emitted worldwide. Perhaps there is a more efficient and less disease-prone alternative. More on this topic in future posts.