For decades, the rule of thumb has been that as a country’s income rises, so does its meat consumption. Now a turning point may be at hand among high-income nations, especially in Western Europe and North America, where per capita consumption of meat is projected to decline in the coming decade, said a report on the world agricultural outlook on Thursday.
Roughly one in six of the planet’s nearly 8 billion people live in wealthy nations, and they account for about one-third of the meat consumed globally. But now “meat consumption patterns of consumers in most high-income countries … have started to stagnate,” said the report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. In their report, Agricultural Outlook 2023-32, they forecast that poultry, already popular, would provide 41 percent of meat protein in 2032.
“Globally, there is a growing trend among consumers to become increasingly sensitive to animal welfare, environmental, and health concerns, and poultry has the least carbon footprint. In some instances, these shifts in preferences may lead to shrinking per capita meat consumption, as in the case of the European Union, for which the Outlook foresees an ongoing substitution of beef and pig meat by poultry meat,” the report said.
“North America and Oceania, which historically have strongly preferred beef, are expected to see the most significant decrease in per capita consumption,” said the report. It said poultry would be the most popular meat, followed by pork, beef, and sheep.
But if wealthy consumers put a little less meat on their plates, the rest of the world is still hungry for it, said the Agricultural Outlook. It projected a 2 percent per capita increase in global meat consumption over the coming decade, thanks to the combination of higher incomes and growing populations. Worldwide poultry consumption, measured by tonnage, would grow by 15 percent, pork by 11 percent, beef by 10 percent, and sheep, a relatively small part of the meat supply, by 15 percent.
The OECD and FAO expect global meat consumption to grow until 2075, although “demographic trends, human health, animal welfare, and environmental concerns may negatively impact meat consumption” in the longer term.
“At some point during the remainder of the twenty-first century, global meat demand may begin to decline. Nevertheless, resource and environmental constraints could limit further growth in meat supply and demand, potentially causing the turning point to arrive earlier,” they said.
Global agricultural and food production were projected in the Agricultural Outlook to grow by an average of 1.1 percent annually through 2032, half the rate in the decade ending in 2015.
In a special assessment of key input prices for farming, the OECD and FAO said that a 10 percent increase in fertilizer prices results in a 2 percent increase in food prices, “with the burden falling heaviest on the poor.”
“Investments in innovation, further productivity gains, and reductions in the carbon intensity of production are needed to lay the foundation for long-term food security, affordability, and sustainability,” said OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann.
The OECD/FAO report is available here.