Future growth in global meat consumption: three income scenarios

Meat has played an increasingly important role in both the human diet and the agricultural economy over time. As it stands the global population is currently eating more beef, pork, and chicken than ever, which begs the question: can (will) consumption go up from here? This thesis models the impacts of different plausible income scenarios on future meat consumption at the global scale in context of the idea that income drives increased meat consumption until a point of saturation. Several far-reaching economic events have occurred in the past two decades, necessitating an updated understanding of the relationship between income and consumption growth. The analysis is concerned with several questions that will impact stakeholders over the next period of consumption: how much meat will be consumed by the global system, the division of the three different meat types among this total volume, and the geographical distribution and implications of expected future growth. To answer these questions, income elasticities for beef, pork, and chicken are estimated using historical price, income, and consumption data for a set of 26 countries. Applying several different hypothetical income scenarios to the model, the resulting meat consumption projections increase understanding of the role that economic forces play in shaping global meat demand in a modern, globalized food system. The testing of different scenarios confirms that while the majority of meat consumption by volume occurs in large higher-income countries, most future consumption growth will come from middle-income countries. However, because the model finds that meat consumption income elasticities are higher at lower incomes (particularly for chicken and beef), the scenario testing is clear that negative economic events will have a larger downward effect on global meat consumption than future increases in income will have a positive effect.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Agricultural & Applied Econ

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Kuck, Gretchen

Contributors dc:contributor

• Schnitkey, Gary D
• Goldsmith, Peter
• Paulson, Nick

• consumption projections
• meat demand

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Gretchen Kuck

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115738

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115738