Study On The Milk Consumption Of Urban And Rural Residents In China

Milk is the food with high nutrition,so it is very important to improve the dietary pattern and physical quality. The dairy industry can invigorate the development of other industries,so it can not only make full advantages of solving the issues of agriculture,farmer and rural area,but also actively facilitate the development of the national economy. After the founding of new China,dairy products changed from the exclusive product to the products bought by coupon. Until 1990s, the urban and rural residents began to consume dairy products,and the per capita consumption increased rapidly. But the growth rate of per capita milk consumption of urban residents slowed sharply, even paced up and down. Meanwhile, the dairy plants didn't do their best to develop consumer markets in rural areas. These became the bottleneck of the development of the china dairy. So, it is urgent to increase the milk consumption of urban and rural residents.After reviewing the development history and summarizing the characteristics of milk consumption of urban and rural in China, the factors that effect the milk consumption were analysed based on quantitative methods and qualitative methods. These factors were taken as the basic variables to make the Ward Cluster Analysis on the milk consumption of urban and rural residents. The results were:①although the per capita milk consumption increased since 1992, and the growth rate was the fastest among the husbandry food, it had a large margin with the average level of the world; the milk consumption of urban residents grown slowly from 2004, so the gap between urban and rural residents was shortened; the urban residents preferred to consume liquid milk, but the rural residents preferred to consume milk powder.②per capita milk consumption of urban and rural residents had a distinct positive correlation with per capita income; the higher annual income the urban residents had, the higher they expend on milk consumption; the income elasticity of demand of milk consumption was highest among the husbandry foods.③At present, the price of milk had more significant influence on the milk consumption of urban residents but less important influence on that of rural residents.④The sustainable growth of the per capita GDP and the improvement of dietary pattern can invigorate the increase of the milk consumption.⑤Market conditions and eating habits could effect the milk consumption of urban and rural residents.⑥The results of Cluster Analysis showed that milk consumption of urban residents could be divided into 4 classes, and that of rural residents could be divided into 3 classes.An Comprehensive and in depth empirical analysis had been taken based on the consumer surveys after the"Fu Yang"scandal and"San Lu"scandal in order to study the factors that influence the milk consumption and the consumer behavior of urban residents. The major results were: consumers paid more and more attention to the quality and safety of the milk, the event about milk quality and safety could lower the consumers'confidence; and had more confidence on government than dairy plants; the distribution of age, occupation, and education level of the consumers tended to be more balanced gradually; consumers thought that the milk became more and more important, and they had mastered more scientific knowledge about how to drink milk, but they should master more knowledge. The forecasts of milk consumption demand of urban and rural resident and the production of source milk from 2008 to 2020 were made by grey forecast model and time series. The balance between supply and demand showed that the production would greater than demand before 2020. So the suggestions on how to increase the milk consumption of urban and rural residents were put forward.