Meat + Poultry - May 2005 - 59

GLOBAL FOOD SYSTEM

How much do we
spend on food?
tial markets: Europe with its food
policies and the EU market's likelihood of surpassing the United States
in size, China with its vast supply and
demand, and Japan with its demand
of high-quality imports. Japan is the
world's leading importer of agricultural products, and the United States
has the largest share of Japan's
imports.

The U.S. agricultural trade surplus is
rapidly deflating, down from $9.6 billion
last year to a projected $1 billion in 2005.

Westhoff adds that India,
although not yet a substantial trader,
is a large country with a lot of potential through growing income and
population. "They don't import a lot
of beef, but they have growing vegetable, dairy and chicken imports,"
he says.
Heinz says the greatest evidence
that the animal-protein food system
has gone global is the growth in
world beef and pork demand. The
United States is able to supply its
own protein demand, but many industrial nations require imports to
meet theirs, he says.
Mapping the Global Future
projects the world economy to be

about 80 percent larger in 2020 than
it was in 2000 and average per capita
income to be roughly 50 percent
higher. Large parts of the world will
enjoy unprecedented prosperity, it
says, and a numerically large middle
class will be created for the first time
in some formerly poor countries.
For example, Brazil's 2004 grocery
store sales rose 9.4 percent, reports
just-food.com. The growth is attributed to economic improvement,
including a drop in unemployment
and a rise in income.
"As economies and incomes
improve, people opt to spend their
extra money to improve diet by adding meat and nutritional value,"
Heinz says.

Local food
Every action - even those in the
agriculture industry - has an equal
and opposite reaction. The same is
true with globalization, which is
spawning a fervent local-food movement.
"Local foods make sense intuitively as part of a plan to support
local economies," says Richard Pirog,
marketing and food systems program
leader at Iowa State University's
Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. "(Consumers) like the idea
of supporting local farms and their
local economy."
As fuel prices and foodtransportation costs increase, local
and regional food systems make
good economic and environmental
sense, he continues. To contrast the
differences in food transport between local and national/global food
systems, Pirog and his colleagues use
"food miles," the distance food travels from where it is grown to where
it is purchased by (or served to) the
consumer or end-user.
"The average consumer can
relate to a simple mileage number;
they understand that a low number
means the food is more local, and a

■ United States
GDP per capita:
Income spent on food:
Food income spent on
Meat products:
Dairy products:
■ Brazil
GDP per capita:
Income spent on food:
Food income spent on
Meat products:
Dairy products:
■ Canada
GDP per capita:
Income spent on food:
Food income spent on
Meat products:
Dairy products:
■ Japan
GDP per capita:
Income spent on food:
Food income spent on
Meat products:
Dairy products:
■ Mexico
GDP per capita:
Income spent on food:
Food income spent on
Meat products:
Dairy products:
■ Russia
GDP per capita:
Income spent on food:
Food income spent on
Meat products:
Dairy products:
■ United Kingdom
GDP per capita:
Income spent on food:
Food income spent on
Meat products:
Dairy products:

$37,800
09.7%
19.6%
8.6%
$7,600
22.7%
24.5%
14.0%
$29,800
11.7%
16.5%
11.2%
$28,200
14.9%
7.8%
4.8%
$9,000
26.6%
17.3%
10.9%
$8,900
34.4%
22.9%
13.3%
$27,700
16.4%
12.6%
6.9%

Note: GDP per capita reflects the
average income of a country's citizens.
Source: World Bank, USDA
Economic Research Service and
The World Factbook of the CIA

high number means the food may
come from across the country, or
across the world," Pirog says.
To arrive at more precise estimates, Pirog considered only food
traveling within the continental
Continued on page 8
http://www.just-food.com
Meat + Poultry - May 2005

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