Research On Food Consumption And Nutrition Of Rural Residents In Jiangsu Province

With the improvement of people’s income, nutrition safety has become an important issue of "food safety", and food consumption is also directly related to the condition of our nutrition. Based on the analysis of economics theory on the demand for food consumption and research model related, this research is to analysis rural residents’food consumption characteristics, level and pattern in Jiangsu Province by using descriptive statistical analysis and LA\AIDS model. It focuses on the analysis of demand elasticity among different food and different regions. Then this article also analysis the nutrient elasticities among energy, protein and fat. On the other hand, this study predict the rural residents’food and nutrition trends in the context of the income doubling plan in Jiangsu Province.The description analysis shows that:the mode of rural residents’food consumption in Jiangsu Province has developed more healthily with the improvement of living standard, but compared to the urban residents’, there is a big gap. Even inside the province, there is still a different, especially in Northern area, local rural residents prefer plant foods. In addition, it surpasses the national and eastern average, but there is no obvious outstanding advantages. Moreover, through comparison of rural food consumption in Jiangsu Province with the goal in2010of national food consumption, we still see the gap.The empirical study on rural residents’food consumption shows that:1st, In the consumption share of various types of food, the main is rice, vegetables and pork, and the Northern mainly consume plant foods, the Southern consume animal foods as much as plant foods, another one slightly rely on plant foods.2nd, Food is a kind of necessity to rural residents in Jiangsu Province, the demand will not change a lot when income increases, but the impact can be significantly greater in central region.3rd, The food price impact on the demand is not great, that is to say, the food self-price elasticity is very small. At the same time, the southern rural residents are more sensitive to the price of grain and vegetables, and the northern rural residents are more sensitive to the price of eggs, dairy products, fish and other aquatic products, besides, all the rural residents are generally sensitive to the price of fruit, pork, beef, mutton and poultry.4th, The Cross-elasticity values of various types of food are relatively small among rural residents in Jiangsu Province, it shows that there is no obvious alternative and complementary relationship between them.Through the exploration about nutrient elasticities, we can find that the change of income cannot affect rural residents’ nutrition level significantly, and there is a little difference among different regions. Overall, grain is the basic source of nutrition. In addition, the rice price has big influence on energy and protein intake levels, and the pork price has obvious effect on fat intake level.In the context of the income doubling plan in Jiangsu Province, the increase of income can effectively improve the food consumption structure of rural residents, which is conductive to the achievement of the national food and nutrition development goals. At the same time, it can promote rural non-farm employment, that will be very helpful. Besides, the family age structure also has some effect on the food consumption structure of rural residents. Moreover, considering the income growth, the rural residents in central region have the biggest increase on nutrition intake, the second one is in northern area.Based on findings in this study, the research puts forward the following relevant policy recommendations:strengthening rural residents’food and nutrition consumer attitudes; applying appropriate economic means according regional differences; emphasizing the diversity and quality of food; strengthening food safety supervision, in order to ensure the safety of food consumption; promoting rural residents’non-farm employment; accelerating rural commercialization and marketization.