China leads a late recovery
World Feed Panorama:
Estimates for world
feed production show
that early setbacks
were followed by
volume growth later
in the year in a few
countries, most
particularly on the
Development of the EU industrial compound feed production
160
(1960 to 2009) (mio. t)
EEC- 27
140
EEC- 25
EEC- 15
120
EEC-12
100
EEC- 10
80
EEC- 9
60
40
EEC- 6
20
0
1960
1964
1968
1972
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
1996
2000
2004
2008
Chinese market.
Global production has increaed, despite the decline recorded by Europe.
Over the years that Feed International has
been monitoring world feed volumes, the
global production of diets for farm animals
and aquaculture by industrial mills doubled
between 1975 and 2005 (from 290 million
to 626 million metric tons) before recording
a further increase of more than 8% up to
2008. We can now report that — appar-
unlikely during the early months. Reports
reaching Feed International at the time often
spoke of cutbacks because of the hango-
ver from the high grain prices of the previ-
ous year and the pain of the international fi-
nancial recession, which was driving down
the consumer demand for animal and fish
protein products.
The rate of China’s growth has
surprised the industry.
ently against the odds — the global total
has risen yet again. Our figure of 707.6
million metric tons produced worldwide in
2009 would represent an annual growth
rate of almost exactly 1%.
This may seem only a small rise compared with former years, but any increase
in the world output last year looked to be
Turnaround in latter part of 2009
The extent of the turnaround in the
later part of 2009 is shown most clearly
by the example of China. The first three
months of the year had reportedly seen
China’s total feed output falling by over
6% compared with January to March
2008 and even by mid-year the govern-
mental animal husbandry department was
still reporting a 5% decrease for the first
five months. The carryover from the grain
market of 2008 had made compound
feeds seem expensive so that farmers
bought less. Credit-crunch economics
had reduced the growth in consumption
of meat by urban inhabitants while also
giving small to medium feed mills some
financial difficulties. In addition, media
headlines over food safety incidents had
hit the Chinese market for dairy products
extremely hard.
