Sustainability implications of rising global pork demand

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🔬研究者:Provides a comprehensive overview of pork demand projections and environmental challenges, useful for agricultural sustainability research.

🏢実務担当者:Highlights supply chain risks and environmental pressures in pork sourcing, relevant for food companies' sustainability strategies.

🏛政策担当者:Informs policy on balancing food security and environmental sustainability, especially in import-dependent countries.

Current projections point to rising global pork demand fueled by population and income growth mainly in the developing world. Global pork trade is driven by imbalance between national demand and supply and influenced by supply shocks and trade disruptions. Increasing pig production due to rising pork demand can intensify a host of environmental challenges such as increasing GHG emissions and land and water stresses. Balancing the need to meet rising pork demand and to ensure environmental sustainability requires a multipronged approach, encompassing technological development and adoption, resilient production systems, responsible consumption choices, well-functioning global markets, and stronger environmental regulations. Pork plays a very important role in the dietary choices of consumers in many parts of the world. As an important source of animal protein and other nutrients, demand for pork is projected to rise in the near future (OECD/FAO, 2022). Much of the projected increase is due to growing demand in Asia, and to a lesser extent in Latin America, fueled by growing income levels and population. Africa’s pork demand is also projected to rise, although from a much lower base and mainly due to population growth. In the developed world, demand is expected to remain stable. Current projections also assume normalized demand and supply conditions after recent shocks from the African Swine Fever (ASF). While rising pork demand at the global scale provides the global swine sector with further growth opportunities, it will intensify important sustainability challenges in swine production. These challenges include on-farm greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, indirect emissions related to feed production and associated land use and land use changes, and increased risk of pollutant release to soil, water, and air. In addition, supply shocks and disruptions to trade linkages can also threaten the smooth functioning of the global pork and feed markets. This paper summarizes current projections on future pork demand, characterizes factors affecting market stability, reviews the key environmental sustainability challenges, and offers perspectives on how to balance the challenges to simultaneously meet rising demand and enhance the swine sector’s environmental sustainability. Several international/supranational organizations and national agencies regularly publish projections on international agricultural commodity markets (see summary provided in Bouyssou et al., 2021). Among them are the decadal projections released annually by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO). According to the latest OECD/FAO projection to the year 2031 (OECD/FAO, 2022), global pork demand is expected to rise from the average annual level of 110.5 million metric tons during the most recent triennial period (i.e., 2019–2021) to 128.9 million metric tons in 2031 (Figure 1a). The main growth engine of global pork demand is Asia, where total demand is projected to rise from 61.4 million metric tons to 76 million metric tons during the projection period. On a per capita basis, an average Asian consumer will increase pork consumption from 10.4 to 11.9 kg. Within Asia, China maintains its dominant position as the world’s largest consumer, with total demand rebounding from the recent ASF-caused slump to 58.9 million metric tons. Continued income growth is expected to push China’s annual per capita pork consumption to 31.2 kg, approaching the consumption level in the European Union (EU), the world’s second largest pork market. Elsewhere in Asia, rising demand is also expected in growing economies such as Vietnam and the Philippines but not for high-income countries such as Japan and Korea. Latin America and Africa will increase their respective consumption levels, but due to different reasons: rising demand in Latin America is driven by higher per capita consumption while Africa’s growing demand is due to expected population growth. In the developed world, total and per capita consumption levels will remain flat or show very modest increase, reflecting relatively inelastic pork demand relative to income changes when per capita consumption of all meats has already reached very high levels. a: Current and projected pork production (unit: 1,000 metric tons, carcass weight equivalent. source: OECD/FAO (2022); b: Shares of global pork exports by top exporters, 2019–2021 (source: comtrade.un.org); c: Shares of global pork imports by top importers, 2019–2021 (source: comtrade.un.org). d: On-farm swine emission intensities by country (source: FAO). To meet expected rising global pork demand, one immediate concern for the global swine sector is to manage supply shocks such as the ASF outbreaks, which damaged production capacity in a number of key producing countries. For instance, ASF outbreaks in China that first emerged in August 2018 reduced the country’s pig herd by 4.8% and sow herd by 8.3% already by December 2018 as compared to the previous year (official statistics as cited in Han et al. (2022)). Other studies, however, point to much higher reductions (e.g., You et al., 2021). The ASF outbreak led to significant economic losses for swine farmers, suppressed consumer demand, and drastically increased pork imports in China (Mason-D’Croz et al., 2020; You et al., 2021; Han et al., 2022). The ability for the global swine sector to meet the expected rising demand is contingent on successful efforts to recover from ASF outbreaks and to prevent similar adverse shocks in the future. Global swine production and pork demand are not evenly distributed at country level, necessitating the need to balance demand and supply through trade linkages. As shown in Figure 1b, global pork exports are dominated by several large exporters in North America (USA and Canada), the EU (Spain, Germany, Demark, the Netherlands, etc.), and Brazil. The top 10 exporters contributed 91% of world total pork exports (by carcass weight equivalent) during 2019–2021. On the import side (Figure 1c), China has become the dominant importer, having imported 29% of world imports during 2019–2021, followed by Japan (8%) and Korea (4%). China’s emergence as the leading importer can be partially explained by the significant supply shocks it suffered in recent years; more fundamentally, cost disadvantages in China’s swine sector will likely imply continued imports, even after the country completes its full recovery from the ASF shocks (Han et al., 2022). Significant intra-EU trade is also observed, as Italy, Germany, Poland, Romania, and Czechia are all among the top 10 importers. Compared to the more concentrated global exporters, importing countries are more diverse, as the top 10 importers only have a combined share of 73%, indicating that more importing countries depend on the global markets. There are also strong bilateral dependencies among the importing and exporting countries. For instance, the world’s main exporting countries (e.g., Spain, Germany, USA, and Canada) have all maintained significant exports to the Chinese market in recent years; however, bilateral trade frictions (with the USA and Canada) and export restrictions due to ASF outbreaks (in Germany) have led to quite large shifts in market shares of leading exporters on the Chinese market. Against the backdrop of significant geopolitical tensions and weakened global trade institutions, trade frictions may continue to cause re-configurations of pork trade patterns, thereby demanding countries with surplus production to build more resilient trade relationships while being nimble in seeking out new export markets when trade frictions arise. One of the underlying determinants of the current global pork trade pattern is the cost and availability of feed such as maize and soybean, a factor that is naturally advantageous to North and South America. Both the EU and especially China are major importers of animal feed. In the Chinese case, soybean imports have approached or even exceeded 100 million metric tons (about six times of its domestic production) in recent years. Given the current production efficiency and technology in China and its resource constraints, the absence of feed imports would threaten the country’s 95% pork self-sufficiency goal and result in much larger pork imports, which in turn would translate into significant adjustment of swine production at the global level and likely change the world soybean trade patterns. Therefore, whether or not and to what extent China changes its self-sufficiency goals in pork and soybean will have major implications on the global markets (Yu and Cao, 2015). The animal food sector as a whole is responsible for 14.5% of the anthropogenic GHG emissions (Gerber et al., 2013). On-farm emission intensity of swine production is generally far less than for cattle but higher than for poultry, although significant differences exist across different production systems and countries (Figure 1d), according to the FAO’s emission intensity dataset (https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/EI). Adding indirect emissions from feed production and counting emissions related to land use changes would add significantly more GHG emissions to pork production, as shown in recent life-cycle assessments (see e.g., Poore and Nemecek, 2018; Crippa et al., 2021). According to the summary provided in Willet et al. (2019), on a per serving basis, pork emits less than 10% of the GHG emissions from a serving of beef or lamb but more than twice of the emissions from poultry. As such, advocates of mitigating climate change in the agricultural and livestock sector often encourage dietary shifts away from animal sourced food including pork, which would result in reduced swine production (see e.g., Willett et al., 2019; Costa et al., 2021; Clora et al., 2021). Within the meat sector, strong arguments have also been made to favor poultry over red meats, du

• openalex https://doi.org/10.1093/af/vfac070first seen 2026-08-02 17:56:23