Forecasting China’s food grain demand 2021-2050 with attention to balanced dietary and fertility policies

Forecasting China’s food grain demand 2021-2050 with attention to balanced dietary and fertility policies | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Forecasting China’s food grain demand 2021-2050 with attention to balanced dietary and fertility policies Xiuli Liu, Yuxing Dou, Dabo Guan, Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, Shouyang Wang This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-675464/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract The estimation of China's future food grain demand has become vital input for designing grain security measures. Addressing the population's age-gender and urban-rural structures under three fertility policies scenarios together with concerns for balanced diets, we established a multi-factor driven model to forecast China's food grain demand (including staple food grain and feed grain) during 2021-2050. The three scenarios are as follows; the two-child fertility policy for couples when either the husband or the wife is from a single-child family (scenario 1); universal two-child policy (scenario 2), and no limitations on the number of children (scenario 3). The results show that in scenario 3, China's food grain demand would peak in 2030 at about 329.3 million tons, about 3.7 million tons higher than that in scenario 2, and 104.7 million tons lower than that estimated with the traditional per capita method. These findings indicate that the demographic transition for fertility policy adjustment is not the main impacting factor of China's food grain security from 2021 to 2050. We might overestimate food grain demand by about 15 percent if we ignored each age-gender and urban-rural structure of the population. Then it may lead to an oversupply of grain and accumulation of stocks, which would generate about 1 billion RMB annual inventory cost burden. An important complement to the demographic strategy would come from the adoption of the proposed Dietary Guideline for Chinese Residents (2019). It can make people much healthier and save about 7.5 percent of China's food grain consumption, reducing the pressure scarce supplies of water and land in the country. Management food grain demand forecasting population structure fertility policies balanced diet Full Text Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-675464","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":36649905,"identity":"68c69885-20ef-452b-8558-ea1aafb430ea","order_by":0,"name":"Xiuli Liu","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAAz0lEQVRIiWNgGAWjYDACZgbGAwkMFjwM7A3Ea2EAapHgYeA5QIJFQLUSQJRApHKD4zwGBx4wSMgY3Hz8dOOPPwzy/A3Mzx7g0yLZDNQCcpjB7TSz27xtDIYzDrCZG+DTws8M15JgdpuxgYFxAwMPmwQ+LWxwLTePf7sJdJg9QS0IW27wmN3gYWNIJKhFspmt4ECCgQSP5JmcMqBfJJJnHGYzw6vF4PzhjQ9/VNjY8x0/vg3oMBvb/vbmZ3i1QDXCWRLgyB0Fo2AUjIJRQCEAAKNIP6yjpNjMAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC","orcid":"","institution":"Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.","correspondingAuthor":true,"submittingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Xiuli","middleName":"","lastName":"Liu","suffix":""},{"id":36649906,"identity":"88042860-eb0c-4e72-8096-d580760be6bd","order_by":1,"name":"Yuxing Dou","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.","correspondingAuthor":false,"submittingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Yuxing","middleName":"","lastName":"Dou","suffix":""},{"id":36650368,"identity":"7d772e4d-a0d6-4030-991a-e51661860c86","order_by":2,"name":"Dabo Guan","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Department of Earth System Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China","correspondingAuthor":false,"submittingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Dabo","middleName":"","lastName":"Guan","suffix":""},{"id":36650369,"identity":"9146264e-d096-4dc8-bfac-13d65906be6b","order_by":3,"name":"Geoffrey J.D. 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Addressing the population's age-gender and urban-rural structures under three fertility policies scenarios together with concerns for balanced diets, we established a multi-factor driven model to forecast China's food grain demand (including staple food grain and feed grain) during 2021-2050. The three scenarios are as follows; the two-child fertility policy for couples when either the husband or the wife is from a single-child family (scenario 1); universal two-child policy (scenario 2), and no limitations on the number of children (scenario 3). The results show that in scenario 3, China's food grain demand would peak in 2030 at about 329.3 million tons, about 3.7 million tons higher than that in scenario 2, and 104.7 million tons lower than that estimated with the traditional per capita method. These findings indicate that the demographic transition for fertility policy adjustment is not the main impacting factor of China's food grain security from 2021 to 2050. We might overestimate food grain demand by about 15 percent if we ignored each age-gender and urban-rural structure of the population. Then it may lead to an oversupply of grain and accumulation of stocks, which would generate about 1 billion RMB annual inventory cost burden. An important complement to the demographic strategy would come from the adoption of the proposed Dietary Guideline for Chinese Residents (2019). 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