Chinese data highlight urban demand

Website gives access to arigultural-realted database based on Chinese statistical publications

Website http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/China at the economic research service of the US department of agriculture gives access to an agricultural-related database based on official statistical publications of the People's Republic of China. Among the statistics it provides are some that offer a glimpse of China’s demand situation for pigmeat and how this varies from towns to countryside.

For 2000, it shows a figure of 1.27 billion as the human population quoted officially in China. This total comprised about 64% rural residents and 36% town-dwellers. But by 2006 the total had become 1.31 billion and the division was now 56% rural/44% urban, with the steady migration of people into the towns and cities.

The impact of this urbanisation process on the national demand for pigmeat becomes clear from official data that rural people in 2000 ate an average of 14.4kg of pork per person/year whereas those in towns averaged 16.73kg. The gap in uptake has widened since then, according to the database. It suggests that townspeople in China in 2006 were eating 20kg on average, but the countryside residents had increased their rate of consumption only to 15.5kg.

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