Livestock in the Food Debate - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 506

12 million tons, and Asia 10 million tons. By 2011, North America had lowered its beef
output by 200,000 tons and was overtaken by both South America and Asia, which pro-
duced 15 million and 17 million tons, respectively.
Even though the disparity between meat consumption in developing and industrial-
ized countries is shrinking, differences remain large: the average person in a develop-
ing country ate 32.3 kg of meat in 2011, whereas in industrialized countries people ate
78.9 kg on average. Pork was the world's most popular meat in 2011. At 110 million tons,
it accounted for 37% of both production and consumption. 50% of the total production
occurred in China, 10% in the United States, and 5% Germany. Vietnam, the largest pro-
ducer in South East Asia and the sixth largest in the world, accounted for only 1% of the
world pork market (Best, 2013). Pork was followed closely by poultry meat, with 101 mil-
lion tons produced. Yet, pork production decreased 0.8% from 2010, whereas poultry
meat production rose 3%. About 40% of the poultry meat comes from the Asia-Pacific
area (Watt 2010). The average daily 36 calorie rise in Western diets due to animal food
sources has to be attributed to an increased consumption of poultry meat and not red
meat, eggs, and butter, which have decreased or remained the same in the past 40 years.2
Poultry is expected to become the most-produced meat in the next few years (Nierenberg
& Reynolds 2012) and the most consumed the world over. World milk-consumption pat-
terns have been somewhat different in the same period. The developed world still had the
largest share of the world consumption with EU-27 countries having the absolute high-
est milk volumes produced in 2012 (150 million tons of milk, from 22.7 million cows).
( http://www.euromilk.org ) High-income countries, thus, continue to consume dispro-
portionate amounts of milk, with very high yields, but milk consumption has doubled
in developing countries, where consumption is also rising. India had the biggest relative
production and consumption share (127 million tons produced in the year 2011-2012
from 72 million cows and 54 million female buffaloes) (NDDB 2013).
Global egg production in 2012 was of almost 1.1 billion eggs. Since 1990, there has been
a tenfold increase in egg production in developing countries. At the end of 2012 there were
approximately 6.4 billion egg-laying hens in the world, each capable of producing up to
300 eggs per year. People in industrial countries eat about twice as many eggs as people in
developing countries, approximately 226 eggs per person per year. Egg consumption gen-
erally is either stable or falling in most countries. Notable exceptions are China, India, and
Mexico, where the highest increase has been registered. China has the lion share in world
egg consumption and production. In 2011 China alone produced nearly 36% of the world
eggs—23.6 million tons—more than four times as many as the next largest producer, the
United States and more than seven times the number in India, the third largest; FAO 2012).
The Price of the Plenty
The opportunities offered by the livestock revolution have not been equally distributed
among agricultural producers. Only a small number of better-off farmers have seized