Op-Ed: Brave words: China to remain 95% self sufficient in grains

China has stated officially that the nation will continue to be nearly self sufficient with new large scale production methods across a range of foods. Brave statement, given China’s water situation, polluted water supplies, and desertification.

To see this Xinhua article in context with China’s various environmental headaches and recent policy shifts: 1. The rural sector in China has been decimated by population moves into urban areas. 2. This actually makes a lot of sense in terms of rationalizing the old types of food production, which really aren’t up to the demands of modern China. 3. The support mechanisms for large scale production will have to be created. Most of China’s domestic economy policies are geared to a major upgrade of quality of life, and this is broadly within those goals. 4. Self sufficiency in food is a sort of historic holy grail in Chinese policy. Chinese emperors stood or fell by it, and even Mao made it a cornerstone of communist policy. 5. Grains are high maintenance crops. Large scale production is no easy task, particularly with over a billion mouths to feed. This is a gigantic scale of production. In its favor, it’s a realistic approach to a tough problem. Not much else would have an impact on the supply needs. 6. Food prices in China have been rising, and are starting to eat into the new prosperity in the lower income brackets. So wages are likely to rise, if that doesn't change. That carries through to production costs, if it happens. 7. China is touchy about grain production, with some reason. Xinhua ran a story recently referring to a small shortfall in production over demand of 10 million tons. That figure represents 2% of China’s needs. The difficulty is increased imports could do some damage to commodity prices, where drought affected grain producers like Australia and the US are struggling with strongly reduced levels of production. A 5%-ish demand could affect availability of grains, world wide, if production continues to decline. In practice, China can actually improve world food supply by increasing its own production. A country with such high levels of demand could soak up global food supplies. Domestic food prices have been rising severely, which is putting pressure on Chinese economic policies to meet increased costs across the range of domestic staples. This is the sort of situation which eventually emerges in history books as one of the real reasons major political and economic events happen. At this point it’s a manageable scenario, and the right solution. The old style production methods can’t possibly keep up the necessary levels of supply, anyway, and definitely not with a reduced rural workforce and water supply. Increased production, using better water management and modern techniques, is a much better, and much more reliable, approach to the situation. China knows better than anyone the dangers of a crash in food supplies. History records millennia of catastrophic famines. That also means that whatever China does about its food supplies has to work. There’s not much margin for error. A significant drop in domestic production would be a real problem. If it’s a big drop, the world’s shrinking grain supplies might not be able to meet demand. In which case a lot of people would be at immediate risk. It’d make Ethiopia in the 80s look like a baby shower.