Food Balanced Sheets

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What are they?

“A national account of the annual production of food, changes in stocks, imports and exports, and distribution of food over various uses within the country” (FAO, 1980)

Tables compiled by FAO to represent comprehensive picture of pattern of country’s food supply

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Supply vs. utilisation

Supply quantity of foodstuffs produced in a country + quantity imported and adjusted for change in stocks

Utilisation quantities exported + fed to livestock + used for seeds + used in manufacture + losses in storage/transport + food supplies available for human consumption

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Basic Equations

Gross domestic food supply production= imports & exports + stock changes

Gross food supply= gross domestic food supply–domestic use/waste

Per caput food supply = gross food supply/ total population

Per caput nutrient equivalents = per caput food supply * conversion factors

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What’s wrong with that?

Amount of food actually consumed is likely to be lower than that estimated in FBS as: household losses of food storage, preparation, cooking, plate waste, fed to domestic pets, thrown away

sub - population variation in diet SEC, ecological, geographical seasonal variation in food supply

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What can you use FBS for?

indicator of food and agricultural situation

indicator of social and economic change

national food supply and agricultural planning

indicator of extent of dependence on imports

indicator of relative amount of food crops used for feeding live stock reference data for individual food consumption ecological studies assessing diet and disease

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Weaknesses of FBS

Food production figures (based on estimated yield rather than actual figures. They are also sometimes inferred from trade statistics.

Wild and home produced foods ( Foods produced at the back of houses, wild fruits and vegetables are not captured)

Black market

Food stocks ( tocks assessment is at the wholesale rather than
retail level

Estimation of losses ( Losses occuring from food wastage is not estimated only processing, storage and transportation)

Nutrient conversion factors(nutrient data conversion loss when nutrients are changed to daily energy requirement)

Population size ( mid year estimates instead of census data)

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However, FBS should not be entirely discounted: provide the only standardised data that permit international comparisons over time

frequently used in nutritional epidemiological studies to investigate diet disease relationships ( ecological studies to evaluate relationship between diet and diseases)

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The data are calculated from the total amount of food produced and imported for countries as a whole, minus food exported, fed to animals, or otherwise not available to humans.

a sensitivity analysis of Chinese food balance sheets has confirmed the relative accuracy of these data and demonstrated that they closely reflect major time and space trends in food availability for human consumption

Why FBS are still useful despite weaknesses

Terminologies related to FBS

Commodity coverage: All edible commodities are taken into account regardless if they are eatne or used as non-food items

Supply and utilization element

Implications of the GAp between agriculture and FBS estimates