More People, More Burgers

With population levels booming and three billion people worldwide trying to enter the middle class, the demand for meat is skyrocketing.  As more families in China, India, and elsewhere enter the middle class, they expect to eat better.  But as global consumption of grain-intensive livestock products climbs, so does the demand for the extra corn and soybeans needed to feed all that livestock.  Grain consumption per person in the United States, for example, is four times that in India, where little grain is converted into animal protein.  For now.

Number of animals killed for food worldwide in 2009 is presented as follows:

• 1.7 million camels
• 24 million water buffalo
• 293 million cows
• 398 million goats
• 518 million sheep
• 633 million turkeys
• 1.7 billion rabbits
• 1.3 billion pigs (China has 446 million pigs)
• 2.6 billion ducks
• 52 billion chickens

Keep in mind the linkage among the demand for animal protein, the supply of grain, and the demand for ethanol.  In 2010, the U.S. harvested nearly 400 million tons of grain, of which 126 million tons went to ethanol fuel distilleries (up from 16 million tons in 2000).  This massive capacity to convert grain is now tied to the price of oil.  So if oil goes to $150 per barrel or more, the price of grain will follow upward as it becomes ever more profitable to convert grain into oil substitutes.