Agrarian transition in Viet Nam - Sectoral Activities

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SAP 2.74/WP.128

Agrarian transition in Viet Nam

Appendix III

Food balance sheet for Viet Nam, 1995

A food balance sheet shows the steps involved in converting total food production to utilizable food and calories. Adjustments are made for stock changes and net imports and for output used for seed and feed and output wasted (SFW). For most foods the raw field product has to be rendered into its processed form -- paddy to rice, sugar cane to sugar, maize on the cob to maize grains -- and extraction rates have to be used for this purpose based on local conditions; the same applies for coefficients for SFW.

Table A.III.1 shows as an example the essential steps involved in converting paddy to rice, then to rice available for domestic utilization, and finally calories per day.

Table A.III.1. Food balance sheet for paddy and calories from other foods, 1995

(million tons and calories per capita per day)

			Underlying assumptions
Paddy Rice	24.693 16.651	m MT	Extraction rate 67 per cent
Minus:
Stock change Export	0.582 2.000
Equals:
Domestic utilization	14.067
Minus:
Seed Feed Waste	0.500 0.167 1.136		3.65 per cent 1.2 per cent 8.1 per cent
Equals:
Available for food Per capita Calories per capita per day	12.051 162.9 1 652	m MT kg	Population 73.96 million Calories per kg 3 700
From other foods:
(Cals capita/day)
Wheat Sorghum Starchy roots Sugar Pulses Oil crops and vegetable oil Vegetables Fruit Meat, offal, animal fats Eggs Seafood	49 95 122 89 23 74 30 69 186 11 24
Total	2 463
Source: FAO, Food balance sheet for Viet Nam.

The same steps would be used in converting other food items and these ensuing calorie figures are shown after the paddy calculations. In this way we have a succinct picture of the food consumption profile of Viet Nam in the mid-1990s. The data are from the FAO. One minor change had to be made to calculate the per capita figures on a national estimate of the population of 73.96 million, instead of the 73.79 million used by the FAO. The national figure reduces the FAO's calculations by just 1 per cent. Some notable features of the food profile of Viet Nam may be highlighted:

At 2,463 calories per capita per day, food availability is (just) 17 per cent above the norm of 2,100 calories.
Rice dominates the diet with over two-thirds of total calories.
Adding other cereals and roots and tubers shows that the diet is heavily concentrated on starchy staples (78 per cent of total calories).
Meat, eggs, and seafood provide just 9 per cent of total calories.

The above indicators reinforce the picture of general poverty in Viet Nam: food supply is at bare sufficiency level and diets are concentrated on cheap sources of calories. The great variation in regional food production implies particular deprivation for the more remote regions.

Updated by BR. Approved by OdVR. Last update: 28 September 2000.