Ecological footprint analysis of food consumption of rural residents in China in the latest 30 years

Food consumption appropriates not only arable land but grassland and other various agricultural land resources. It is of great use to analyse time series of ecological appropriation for food consumption of Chinese rural residents from the perspective of total agricultural land resources and then overall evaluation of resource basis to ensure food security with structure upgrading of food consumption. Firstly the appropriated land categories and domestic conversion factors of food consumption items were discussed. Accordingly, the ecological footprint (EF) model with refined factors was applied to macro-estimate the ecological pressure of food consumption and the changes of Chinese rural residents in the latest 30 years. The study indicated that ecological appropriation increased from 1.465 national standard acre (nsa) in 1980 to 1.782 nsa in 2006 with the changes of Chinese food consumption structure of rural residents, and especially the direct appropriated arable land has declined dramatically since 2000. The consumption category of grain was the largest category per capita in spite of decreasing percentage, so staple foods like grain products, vegetables were always laid the first place even though the consumption pattern has changed greatly. Food EF had a strong correlation with expenditure on food over the period; furthermore, it can be evidently proved by an elasticity of per capita meat and aquatic products EF 0.43. The overall ecological pressure of food EF of Chinese rural residents has increased unsteadily, as the grain-consuming animal products and aquatic product contributed to this. The comparison of dynamic analysis of food EF calculated by fixed yields and variable yields indicated that higher productivity of arable land has greatly alleviated the pressure on resources demanded by the process of structure upgrading of the food consumption of rural residents in China. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V.