- 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.
-
- Hu Jintao, the president, has commissioned studies on
food security. The prime minister, Wen Jiabao, has visited a farm to urge
peasants to boost production with a warning that grain security is a matter
of social stability. Ministers have hurriedly cancelled plans to develop
farmland and the agricultural ministry is offering tax incentives to farmers
who switch to grain production.
-
- Food security is a visceral issue for a generation that
grew up during the famines of the 40s and 50s, when an estimated 40 million
people died of starvation largely as a result of the headlong charge towards
industrialisation known as the Great Leap Forward.
-
- 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
just as the appetites of its increasingly affluent population has grown.
-
- During Mao Zedong's era, every local district was supposed
to be self-sufficient in grain, which often necessitated diversion of scarce
water resources into arid areas. Now, however, the priority for the water
and the land is industrial and urban development.
-
- With economic zones opening up across the country and
more than 10 million peasants moving into cities every year, the amount
of arable land in China has shrunk by 6.7m hectares (16.75m acres) since
1996.
-
- According to Lin Yueqin, an economic researcher at the
China Social Science Academy, the growth of cities is largely to blame
for last year's record drop in grain supply.
-
- "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 so we've seen a long decline in grain output," he said.
-
- Since 1998's record harvest of 512m tonnes, grain production
has fallen every year to just over 400m tonnes.
-
- At the same time, appetites are growing. The 9% annual
growth of the economy is pushing up wages and pushing out waistlines. Urbanites
are more likely to eat meat - which is fattened on grain - and they are
more likely to be fat. According to one study of children in Shanghai,
8% of three- to six-year-olds are obese.
-
- To feed this increasingly hungry population, China has
had to look overseas. In the first six months of the year, the value of
food imports surged 62% to $14.4bn (£8bn). Although the harvest may
improve this year, it is thought unlikely to be enough to match rising
demand. Soyabean imports, which doubled last year to 20.3m tonnes, are
expected to double again this year. The World Bank forecasts a rise in
net grain imports from 14m tonnes next year to 32m tonnes in 2020.
-
- Even rice - the traditional staple - is more likely to
come from neighbouring countries. Such is the demand that Thai farmers
report entire crops being bought long before har vests. Vietnamese authories
blame food-smuggling for a record 20% increase in the price of rice. For
the first time, Pakistan is being approached as a rice supplier. In one
novel experiment, the Chongqing municipal government is leasing land in
Laos to grow food for its urban population.
-
- This has lead to a surge in global food prices. Grain
futures are up 30% this year thanks largely to the China factor.
-
- Although Beijing's leaders are concerned that the growing
dependence on imports - particularly grain from the US, Canada and Australia
- is a strategic vulnerability, many economists argue that it makes sense
to import because China must feed 20% of the world's population with only
7% of the planet's arable land.
-
- China can also afford more imported food than in the
past. Thanks to a booming manufacturing sector, the country has healthy
foreign exchange reserves of $470bn. Most farmers would rather produce
high-value, labour-intensive export crops like fruit and mushrooms than
wheat and barley, which can be produced more cheaply in the US.
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1290852,00.html
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