Planning and Allocation

Aim
This project aims at investigating the impacts on agricultural production of China’s on-going economic transition, in particular, on developments in the livestock sector. Over the past 20 years, China's demand for, and production of, livestock products has increased remarkably due to the rapid growth of the national economy, urbanization, rising living standards, and population growth.

The need to meet the demand for agricultural products has boosted the development of industrial input-intensive livestock production. This fast-growing sector expanded without taking the environmental consequences into account resulting in ecological impacts through pollution and degradation.

Current state and projections
A spatially-detailed inventory of livestock distribution by animal type and major production system, resource constraints, and risk indicators are being compiled. Methodological emphasis is on the development of data harmonization and rescaling procedures.

Scenarios of future livestock distribution by production system are being developed, reflecting socioeconomic developments and driving forces.

Environmental, health, and disease risks
Current and future potential nutrient loads from livestock and crop production are quantified in the context of plausible economic, demographic and urbanization scenario assumptions. Impacts of production intensification trends, critical locations of nutrients output in excess of uptake capacity of available cultivated land are assessed and main factors contributing to the increase in health risks to humans identified.

Livestock production and feed balances
Intensification increases the demand for cereals for livestock feed. Feed production areas are not directly linked with feed use. The aim is to quantify livestock feed requirements by location and production system, identify potential sources of feed supply, and evaluate regional feed balances for base year 2000 and for projected livestock production.

Sustainable production planning and cooperation for risk sharing
Emphasis is on the development of a modeling framework for sustainable livestock production planning and allocation under risks and uncertainties. Diversification of production, planning production chains with large and small producers and production facilities stabilizes the aggregate production, hedges against economic and environmental risks and uncertainties, improves welfare and ensures continuous supply of agricultural products to markets. Explicit accounting of risks in production planning may modify the composition of production units and their intensification levels.

Responsible for this page: Elisabeth Kawczynski
Last updated: 09 Nov 2009