Agricultural raw materials for food and feed: the world

Abstract

Agricultural products grown and used around the world traditionally serve to feed humans and animals and they are also used for non-food uses. Given the importance of the debate on complementarity/competition between humans and animals all plant and animal products are expressed in proteins. This article analyzes successively the world production of vegetable proteins, the distribution of their uses as unprocessed products and products and co-products from the agricultural and food industries, the distribution of consumption by large animal species, the structural evolutions in terms of consumption, the growing weight of the maize/soybean system, the aspects of competition and/or complementarity between human and animal uses and finally the aspects linked to the increasing instability of soybean and maize prices and the regulation of these markets. The world production of vegetable proteins (about 800 million tons), is used for about 630 million in feeds (400 of fodder, 230 of concentrates, used in this state like cereals, and mainly co-products of agro-industrial industries like oilseed meals, of which more than 80 are from soybean alone) and allows production of about 68 million tons of animal protein. The compound feed industry has grown considerably and currently accounts for two-thirds of the concentrates used by all animals but only 18 % of total amounts including forages included. In recent decades a model of corn/soy animal feeding has developed strongly throughout the world, but to a lesser extent in Europe. Soybean prices, like those of other major agricultural commodities such as cereals, have increased steeply in recent decades and are becoming more volatile, but the soybean/corn price ratio has remained very stable over a long period, which tends to contradict the idea of a growing shortage on the protein market.