China’s leaders have raised the alarm about their country’s ability to feed itself as rapid development sucks land, water and people from the food-producing countryside into increasingly large and hungry cities.
After a steady fall in grain harvests, the world’s most populous nation recently became a net importer of food for the first time in its history, raising domestic political concerns and driving up international prices of wheat, rice and soya.
President Hu Jintao has commissioned studies on food security. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has visited a farm to urge peasants to boost production. Ministers have cancelled plans to develop farmland and the Agricultural Ministry is offering tax incentives for farmers to switch to grain production.
Food security is a visceral issue for a generation that grew up during the famines of the 1940s and 1950s largely as a result of the headlong charge towards industrialisation.
Although China’s hefty foreign exchange reserves make it unlikely that there will be another famine any time soon, elderly leaders have watched with concern as the country’s agricultural surplus has disappeared.
During Mao Zedong’s era every district was supposed to be self-sufficient, which necessitated diversion of water into arid areas. Now the priority is industrial and urban development.
With economic zones opening up across the country and about 10-million peasants moving into cities every year, the amount of arable land has shrunk by 6,7-million hectares since 1996.
Economic researcher Lin Yueqin says: ”Urbanisation has eaten into the size of the nation’s arable land. Farmers feel there is little profit to be had from their traditional crops.”
Since 1998 grain production has fallen from 512-million tonnes to about 400-million tonnes a year. At the same time, appetites are growing. The 9% annual growth of the economy is pushing up wages and pushing out waistlines. To feed this hungry population, China has had to look overseas. In the first six months of the year, the value of food imports surged 62% to $14-billion. — Â