Intorduction

Estimation for Per capita and Total Rice Consumption for Asian Countries

and the World Towards 2050

Alias bin Abdullah, Shoichi Ito, Shun Kimura

Tottori University, Japan

Introduction

Rice is the staple food for over half of the world's population. Rice accounts for over 21 percent of global calorie intake. More than 90 percent of world total rice consumption is consume by Asian people with 6 countries (China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Japan) accounted for 80% in the world’s production and consumption. Recently, Asian trend shows the production and export has been increasing but the consumption is decreasing. The decreases of rice consumption in Asian region are because of the increases in per capita income that leads income elasticities of demand for rice as a normal good decreasing (Ito et al). In reality, the consumption share of Asian region effect so much on the world total consumption. Although in terms of individual Asian country, the changes of per capita consumption still small (around 1% in average) but as a total consumption, it generates more on the impact of the world’s rice trade. According to FAPRI, the world trade has grown 4.9% annually during the last decade.

Baker, Herdt and Rose suggest that specific rice consumption pattern among Asian countries are “unique for each country” and also demand increases for cereal grains vary depending upon income level. Ito et. al. has agreed in Rice in Asia : Is It Becoming an Inferior Good that it is useful to investigate Asian rice consumption patterns among countries using a time-series and cross sectional method. Recent data are essential to be included so that the result will be more specific as well as implications for the future particularly in rice development policies and strategies. So, as the purpose of this research, we used time series trend with historical and current data to forecast per capita and total rice consumption for individual Asian countries, Asia and the world.

This research on Asian region is important not only because of the Asian biggest share on production and consumption in the world but also for a few reasons. First of all, the important role of rice in Asian society, culturally and morally are already understood. Since long time ago, rice is the most important diet of Asian family. Secondly, the behavior of the rice planting ground itself. Most of the paddy fields in Asia are not suitable for any other substitute crops due to the physical reason (low area) and climate (rain). Another reason, the important of rice as a staple food makes rice as a control product. Asian government imposed more protection on rice as compared to other crops and react significantly on the changes of the rice prices.

Given the role of rice as a main consumed grain in Asia, it is important to understand and do projections for the rice consumption in Asian region and also the world as a total. The projection also important for future food security reason as well as the affect of rice consumption on world rice production.

In this paper, we analyze and forecast for every individual 22 Asian countries, Non-Asian (as an average) and the world. The 22 Asian countries are China, Japan, Taiwan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, India, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam using the USDA rice per capita and total consumption of 1960-2004 from the homepage http://worldfood.muses.tottori-u.ac.jp. The analysis and the forecast carry out more deeply for the China as this countries’ rice consumption plays biggest role in the Asia and the world rice consumption. We based our estimation on 3 possible situation based on the rate for China herself (average rate 2001-2003) , rate for Japan (1970-2000) and Taiwan (1970-2000). All these rates applied to the China and we look further how the outcome of this rates will affect the Asian and world rice consumption.

Assumption

We based our research on a few assumptions. These assumptions as a based of the projection are important in order to avoid the misleading. The main assumption is the rice per capita consumption will decrease with the increases of per capita income. Another assumption is, except for Burma and Laos, per capita consumption will not grew more as it reach 250 kg/capita. As for the projection, the data point for several years with the starting and ending data points are taken considerably historical trend of all individual Asian countries’ rice per capita consumption. This trend are analyze by drawing the smooth possible line as an average to the fluctuate line. We assumed that, if the extreme changes happen for the available year data, then the estimation point will be change because this extreme changes maybe happens because of some special reasons such as drought or flood which might affect the stability of the projection. For example, if the last available year data is suddenly increasing (not normal), then it will not be taken into calculation for projection

Method

In our projection, there are 5 steps that we followed. These steps are important to makes sure the projection is as accurate as possible and reliable.

As for the first step, we calculated the average rate of per capita rice consumption for every Asian country. The estimation was done based on the average rate of several years’ rice per capita consumption for every individual Asian country. In taking the value of per capita consumption, the past trend was also considered. The standard formula used to calculate the average rates (r) is as follows;

X_t+n= (1 + r)ⁿQ_t where : X is the volume of target year

r is the average growth rate

Q_t is the volume of base year

n is the total number of years

In second step, is we used average rate calculated in first step to estimate per capita rice consumption for every individual Asian countries. The calculated average rate for every Asian country was used as a base to make estimation for the year of 2005 – 2050. As for the China, the different rates were applied. These rates are the average rate for China (2001-2004), Taiwan (1970-2000) and Japan (1970-2000).

Third step is the estimation for Asian total and per capita consumption. All of Asian countries per capita rice consumption was multiplied with individual country's population to find their total consumption. Then, all value of every country's total consumption was adds up to find the Asian total consumption. Asian total rice consumption was found considering the 3 scenarios for China. All 3 scenarios Asian total rice consumption was divided by Asian total population to find 3 scenarios for Asian rice per capita consumption.

As for the fourth Step, the estimation for the total consumption and per capita consumption for Non-Asian countries were made. In order to find the world rice total consumption and per capita consumption, the estimation for the Non-Asian besides Asian were made. Firstly, we calculate the total population and total rice consumption for Non-Asian countries for the year of 1960-2004. The calculation was done by subtracting the value of total population and total rice consumption of Asia from the total for the world. These calculated values were used to calculate the per capita consumption for Non-Asian. The estimation for the average changes rate was made using the formula {X_t+n= (1 + r)ⁿQ_t} for the year of 2001 – 2003 for the other countries. The average rate then used to estimates the per capita rice and total rice consumption for non-Asian countries as an average for the year of 2005-2050.

The final step is made the estimation for the world rice per capita and total consumption. The total for 3 scenarios Asian countries rice total consumption and per capita consumption and non-Asian rice total and per capita consumption was add up together to find 3 scenarios world rice per capita and consumption.

Result

The results of the calculation for the per capita rice consumption rates can be conclude in Table 1.

Table 1 : Changes rates of per capita consumption for Asian countries

Country	Base year 1	Base year 2	% Rate	Country	Base year 1	Base year 2	% Rate
Japan	2000	2003	-1.38%	Brunei	1970	2004	0.13%
Taiwan	2001	2003	-0.68%	Burma	1967	1984	-0.20%
Afghanistan	1990	2003	1.10%	Cambodia	2001	2003	-0.20%
Bangladesh	2000	2003	-0.12%	Indonesia	1990	2003	-0.20%
India	1996	2003	-0.93%	Laos	2001	2004	-0.25%
Nepal	1993	2003	0.70%	Malaysia	2000	2003	-0.87%
Pakistan	2001	2004	-0.55%	Philippines	1996	2003	0.73%
Sri Lanka	1998	2004	-0.10%	Singapore	2001	2003	-1.09%
Hong Kong	1979	2004	-0.83%	Thailand	2000	2003	0.40%
North Korea	1978	1988	0.95%	Vietnam	1993	1997	0.46%