Economic development in China over the last 15 years has been characterized by rapid structural
change and economic growth. A crucial factor enabling general economic expansion in China has been
unprecedented increases in agricultural production and productivity that have freed a large segment of
the rural population to be employed in nonagricultural activities. Growth in agricultural output has
outpaced population increases in recent decades, allowing the country to maintain a high level of selfsufficiency
in meeting its food needs; however, the ability of China to continue satisfying its food
requirements is a question with important ramifications for U.S. agricultural exports and world
agricultural trade in general.
This report documents the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute’s (FAPRI) model of
China’s meat and egg sectors. The commodities included in this model are beef, pork, poultry, mutton,
and eggs. Given a path for world prices and trade volumes, this model can be used in isolation to study
the impacts of policy changes on China’s meat sector, or it can be used in conjunction with the other
country models in the FAPRI system to determine the impact of policy changes on world trade volumes
and prices. The meat and egg production levels generated by this model are used to calculate the demand
for feed grains in China. This report begins with a brief description of China’s trade patterns followed by
a discussion of the model structure itself and the important parameter assumptions. After the livestock
model is described, the procedure used to project feed grain demands is summarized. The report
concludes with a brief description of future model development.