WORTHINGTON, Ohio — Demand for livestock, or animal protein, is growing around the world. While much of that growth has been in China, that is going to change as the country’s population ages and growth slows, said Tanner Ehmke, senior economist at CoBank.

During an Ohio Soybean Council (OSC) webinar, he said according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, world demand for animal-derived protein is expected to double by 2050.

“We are going to continue to see rising population numbers throughout the world,” Ehmke said. “By the year 2050, we’ll see 9.5 (billion) to 10 billion people on the planet. Lost in that conversation sometimes is what those people will be eating; that is going to be determined by their incomes.”

Currently, there are about 3.2 billion people in the middle class around the world, he said. In the next five years, the world will be adding about 160 billion people each year to the middle class, according to latest reports, and that is going to have a significant impact on their diets.

And by the year 2020, for the first time most of the human race will be in the middle class.

“The threshold when people switch from having a starch-based diet, like rice, to including more animal proteins is about $2 a day,” Ehmke explained. “When a person is spending about $2 a day on food, they’re eating a lot of grains and their protein is going to be coming from things like beans, lentils.”

By 2030 the global middle class is going to continue to rise as population continues to increase. Population densities will be located in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Europe is a densely populated part of the world, but its population is aging, Ehmke said. Those countries are not seeing the number of people being born as in past centuries.

“Over the next 15 to 20 years we’re going to see a lot of people consuming a lot of calories – animal proteins,” he said. “Where that is happening is in developing countries. We eat a lot of meat in the United States and Western Europe, as well as a lot of South American countries. We’re not going to see the consumption growth because we are already big consumers.”

People in these developing countries will be eating a great deal of poultry because poultry are efficient converters of grain and oilseed, with a conversion rate of 2.4-3 units of grain per 1 unit of meat. Aquaculture is even more efficient, with almost a 1:1 ratio.

In China and Southeast Asia pork is going to be the main story, Ehmke said. Currently, India is a big consumer of fish, but that is going to be changing as poultry production continues to increase.

“Throughout the world, we are going to continue to see more demand for those efficient converters of grain and oilseeds,” Ehmke concluded. “Worldwide we see a lot of demand for poultry and swine; beef, not so much.

“Beef will be important protein sources in the grassland areas because beef are great converters into protein of grassland, but if you want to do indoor agriculture, it is going to be poultry, aquaculture and swine.”

Added Kirk Merritt, executive director of the Ohio Soybean Assoc. and OSC, “As standards of living continue to improve, people want a diet with more meat and better cooking oils, both of which will equal increased consumption of soybeans. Ohio soybean farmers already export more than half of their crop to international markets, so the importance of continuing to maintain and build global demand is hard to overstate.”