Although questions of food security have been prompted by many factors globally, such as natural disasters like drought and floods, overpopulation in China has been the biggest cause for concern in regards to the country’s ability to feed its citizens (McBeath & McBeath, 2008). China has 22% of the global population yet just 7% of the world’s arable land and thus the question of whether that land is sufficient to provide food for both internal consumption and exportation has been a focus of national policy and concern for thousands of years (McBeath & McBeath, 2008). Due to the fact that arable land is limited in both quantity and quality in China, great efforts beginning during China’s reform period have been focused on increasing crop yield on the land already available (McBeath & McBeath, 2008). While some of these efforts (such as the use of genetically-modified crops) are not yet known to cause great harm, others (such as the use of chemical fertilizers) have already been proven to cause varying degrees of environmental ha (McBeath & McBeath, 2008). As stated by Christansen, efforts such as these have “allowed land to be gainfully included in production that had only borne low yields in the past, and pushed the boundaries of rice and wheat production far beyond its ‘natural’ limits” (2009, p. 552).
Environmental Harm from Former ‘Solutions’
However, the use of extreme agricultural practices has also had long-term impacts on the environmental health of China, leading in turn to further loss of cropland. According to McBeath & McBeath (2008), agricultural productivity faces two major threats:
- Erosion – caused by the long-term deforestation that resulting from the clearing of virgin forests to make arable cropland – has led to the loss of topsoil in more than one third of China’s total territory.
- Pollution – caused by “industrial waste, mining operations, and the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides” – have changed the nutrient balance of the soil that remains.
Measures like deforestation and fertilizer use have allowed for short-term increases of agricultural yield, but often have come at the expense of drastic impact to the local environment and its future ability to feed the Chinese people.
Where does the burden lie?
Unfortunately, the individuals responsible for making the decisions to use these harmful measures are not those most vulnerable to their effects. Those who depend on harmful agricultural practices for their subsistence and income simply can not “afford to take long-term consequences into consideration” (Elvin, 1993, p. 35). Concerns of food security affect everyone in China, but the population that would most be benefitted by the implementation of a system to produce maximum agricultural output and enact the minimum environmental consequence are the farmers themselves.
Sources
- Christiansen, Flemming. “Food security, urbanization and social stability in China.” Journal of agrarian change 9.4 (2009): 548-575.
- Elvin, M. (1993). Three thousand years of unsustainable growth: China’s environment from archaic times to the present. East Asian History, 6, 7-46.
- McBeath, J., & McBeath, J. H. (2009). Environmental stressors and food security in China. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 14(1), 49-80.