As the world’s most populous country, China consumes a lot of food. As an emerging economic powerhouse, even despite recent financial woes, China consumes a lot of food in greater quantities than it did three or four decade ago—meat, in particular. And with a growing population and a growing middle class, the demand for meat in China is expected to continue to rise . As a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers posits, it “will place enormous burdens on an already challenged domestic food system and have significant ramification on international trade in agriculture.” The report, released Monday, is mainly concerned with the economic effects of China’s changing diet, but the rise of meat consumption—and increasing dependence on imported animal feed required to meet that demand—are tied up in global land use, resources, and climate change too. While estimates vary, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization attributes 14.5 percent of global […]