粮食安全:全民的“饭碗”(英文)

PROTECTING

RICE BOWLTEXT BY SAM DAVIESILLUSTRATION BY WANG SIQI AND PHOTOGRAPHS FROM VCG

THE

38

With Covid-19 affecting domestic farming

and global food supplies, can China ever

reach its goal of food security?

疫情等因素加剧了农业生产与供应困难，中国该如何保障粮食安全、保住全民“饭碗”？behind.

In a viral video posted on Weibo on

June 22, the secretary berates a farmer

who has just begun harvesting his crops:

“Get a Covid test!” he roars, as a crowd

of villagers watch on. “You can’t harvest

until you’ve got one!” Sickle in hand, the

farmer retorts: “It’s already ripe, how can

I not harvest it?” The official persists until

eventually the exasperated farmer leaves

the scene with the words, “Fine, then you

do it yourself!”

Since the pandemic began, Covid-19

has been more than just a strain on

the country’s medical system and the

livelihoods of ordinary people: It has

placed huge pressure on China’s whole

agricultural sector, threatening the

country’s food production and distribution

networks. When the northeastern Jilin

province, the country’s second-biggest

corn producer and fifth biggest producer

of all grains, imposed travel restrictions

and months-long lockdowns to battle

its worst Covid-19 outbreak this spring,

farmers reported being unable to go out

into their fields, while many who worked

As farmers headed to their fields

of golden ripe wheat near

Zhumadian in central China’s

Henan province this June, the

village Party secretary wasn’t far

39

in the cities in the off-seasons weren’t

able to return to their hometowns for

planting.

These challenges have affected

consumers too—in November last

year, China’s Ministry of Commerce

encouraged families to stockpile daily

necessities for the winter, sparking

fears that food shortages were on the

horizon. And in Shanghai, which

entered a months-long citywide

lockdown at the beginning of April

this year, residents struggled to get

food, and even resorted to bartering

for daily necessities, as supply chains

broke down.

For most of China’s population,

food scarcity during wars and the

“three years of starvation” in the mid-20th century are distant memories

today—if they even remember it at

all. Yet food security has never been

off the national agenda, and China’s

leaders are keen to make the country

self-sufficient in food production as

the pandemic disrupts international

supply chains, countries start banning

exports on vital foodstuffs, and China’s

diplomatic relations deteriorate with

several major food trading g 20 percent of the world’s

population on 7 percent of its

arable land, and perhaps only 5

percent of its water resources, poses

a massive challenge. Urbanization

and industrialization, an agricultural

system dominated by small

household farms, deteriorating

ecological resources, and increasing

food consumption levels all make

competing demands, while new goals

to increase self-sufficiency sometimes

contradict the country’s long-term

agricultural production in China has

soared over the last three decades

as farms have become increasingly

mechanized and productive. The

country’s grain production rose from

430 million tons in 2003 to 682.9

million in 2021. Under China’s 14th

Five Year Plan, which runs to 2025,

the country intends to maintain

annual grain production of 650

million tons.

Yet growing incomes have caused

consumption to also rise sharply. In

1980, the Chinese consumer ate an

average of 2,163 kilocalories a day,

but that rose to 3,200 kilocalories by

2018 according to the UN Food and

Agricultural Organization, higher

than the likes of Japan and New

Zealand. China is also the largest

meat consumer (though not the largest

per capita) in the world.

According to the Global Food Index,

which ranks countries on their food

security, China ranked second in the

world in 2021 for the “availability” of

food in the country, but it placed 34th

overall for “food security,” which takes

into account the affordability of food,

resilience of agricultural production,

and food safety.

For farmers, rising costs are a

serious impediment to answering the

country’s call to increase production,

and to earning a livelihood. Shen

Baolu, a 64-year-old farmer in

Anyang, Henan province, works his 20

mu (1.33 hectare) plot of land alone

“for basically no income,” despite

using more machinery in recent years.

“The harvests have definitely become

larger than before, but the costs have

gone up too,” Shen tells TWOC. “Us

common folk are suffering.”

Input costs for fertilizer, manpower,

and land rents have risen sharply in

China’s scientists are developing more

productive crossbred “hybrid” rice varieties,

but GM rice remains prohibited40

the last two years. Wang Fengjiang, returns. During the spring planting per mu of land. Before, they used to

a rice farmer in Liming village, Jilin and autumn harvest seasons, each give it to us very promptly, but now

province, has been farming for over 20 spanning one month, he sometimes it’s very delayed. After a whole year’s

years on the two hectares that belong leaves for the fields at and worth of planting, you get to the next

to his family, in addition to around works for 12 or 13 hours a day. “I year and they still haven’t given it,”

four hectares that he contracted work until my waist is sore and my he complains, calling it a “pitiful”

from other villagers this year. Those back aches.” amount anyway.

contracting fees have risen from These financial struggles come The government also sets minimum

over 8,000 yuan per shang (a unit despite China’s Ministry of prices for the purchase of strategic

of measurement used in Northeast Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) grains, but these are so low that Wang

China equal to 15 mu or roughly one giving over 289 billion US dollars in says it’s the “equivalent to working for

hectare) in 2016, to 11,000 yuan this

year. Wang tells TWOC the price of

subsidies to agricultural producers in

2021, according to the Organization

nothing.”

Getting buy-in from farmers is a

fertilizer has doubled over the last few for Economic Cooperation and significant stumbling block for China’s

strategic food reserves. “You can’t just

expect the farmers to foot the bill for

Rapid urbanization sometimes occupies

the country’s food security,” argues

previously agricultural land, piling pressure

Dr. Zhang Hongzhou, a research

on China’s food productionfellow at Nanyang Technological

University in Singapore and author

ofChina and Global Food Security the 2018 book Securing the Rice Bowl:

. “Staple

[grains] are not profitable at all.

Basically…when the farmers produce

wheat, they suffer losses even with the

government subsidies.”

After declining steadily from 2015

to 2019, agricultural subsidies have

ramped up significantly during the

pandemic. Shandong province,

for example, paid grain farmers a

collective one-off subsidy of 1.53

billion yuan in 2021. But a wider

concern with food security has

preoccupied China’s rulers even since

ancient times: leaders who provided

adequate food supplies often enjoyed

more political legitimacy, Zhang

years, while wages for the three to five Development, far more than the 98

argues.

laborers he occasionally hires to help billion dollars and 53 billion dollars

In more recent times, memories

with harvesting have almost doubled the EU and US gave to their farmers

of food shortages and famines

as well. The price for rice, meanwhile, in the same year. China’s subsidies are

throughout the 20th century live on

has fallen. meant to help farmers make a living

for many, “including China’s current

As a result of these shrinking and encourage them to plant staple

leaders,” Zhang says, explaining why

margins, he plants less: just six grain products the government deems

food security has come to occupy

hectares compared to the 20 hectares strategic, rather than more lucrative

such an important place in Chinese

he farmed in 2018. “I normally farm cash crops like fruit and vegetables.

policymaking. Even now, with food

80 to 90 mu, but sometimes I feel But even with cash incentives, Shen

much easier to come by, Zhang recalls

exhausted and only do 30 to 40 mu,” finds his wheat and corn are rarely

that his grandparents, who migrated

Wang tells TWOC, explaining that profitable, and the payments are

from Henan to Shaanxi in the 1950s

the extra effort is not worth the limited becoming less reliable. “I get 80 yuan

viewed “wasting grain as a crime,”

Issue 4 /2022

41

and would pick up food dropped on

the floor without hesitation. “They

cherished food.”Shen, who grew up as one of

five children in the 1950s and 60s,

remembers that when he was a child

“people were all skinny because they

didn’t have enough to eat, and then

they had to work the fields, which took

a lot [of energy].” Shen and his family

ate a diet mainly of “sweet potatoes,

pumpkin, and steamed buns.” Only

at the Lunar New Year would they

eat meat, he says, remembering that

“when we cooked, we would dip a

chopstick in the cooking oil and just

put one or two drops [in the pan].”“Of course, we cherished food,

because we came from a very poor

time, and I taught my children to save

food too,” Shen continues. “We don’t

leave any grain or food left over; we

make sure to eat it all…otherwise I

feel like it’s a waste.” Nowadays, Shen

believes, younger generations are less

concerned with cleaning their plates.

China’s policy makers are similarly

concerned with ensuring food supplies.

In 2006, as part of the 11th Five Year

Plan, the country established a “red

line” level of arable land (set at 1.8

billion mu or 120 million hectares)

that the country must maintain, even

as urbanization and industrialization

progress rapidly. That red line has

held, but only just. The amount of

arable land decreased from 2.03

billion mu in 2009, to 1.91 billion mu in

2019, according to official figures.

Declining levels of arable land,

mainly due to its conversion to other

uses (urban, industrial, or woodland),

is a severe problem, particularly in

more developed regions where cities

are still expanding fast. For much of

the last two decades, selling off land

to real estate developers has also been

a quick vehicle for local governments

to raise funds. But “the biggest threat

to our food security and food safety

is large-scale overuse of cultivated

42land,” Li Renqing, general secretary

of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Agricultural Society Research Center,

told China News Weekly in June this

year.

In particular, the use of chemical

fertilizers, which has tripled in the past

three decades, has degraded the quality

of China’s soil, making it more difficult

or even impossible to grow crops in it.

A team led by Weng Boqi, a researcher

at Fujian Academy of Agricultural

Sciences, found that nearly a fifth

of China’s arable land (19.5 million

hectares) is strongly acidic. Meanwhile,

intensive irrigation has led to salination

of soil in drier regions, already

affecting 660 million mu (44 million

hectares), a third of China’s arable

land, according to state broadcaster

CCTV.

“We hear about China’s ‘grain

miracle,’ how China was able to

feed over 20 percent of the world’s

population with only 7 percent of

the arable land. The other half of

the story is that China uses about

35 percent of global fertilizer and

pesticide, or even higher,” says Zhang.

This use of chemicals affects water

supplies too, already scarce in much of

the last few decades, grain

production has gradually been moving

north in China, as the south and east

have become more urbanized and

industrialized. But the north is far drier

than the south, meaning intensive

irrigation is necessary. While China’s

per capita water supply is only around

25 percent of the world’s average,

irrigation of crops takes up 60 percent

of the country’s total water demand.

But in 2018, the Ministry of Ecology

and Environment found over 15

percent of China’s groundwater was

too polluted even for agricultural government has been trying to

reduce the use of chemical fertilizers

and pesticides for years as well as

making efforts to improve the amount

of “high quality” cultivated land in

the country, while also launching

the South-to-North Water Diversion

Project in 2002 to transfer water

across the country at an estimated

cost of 62 billion US dollars. In

1996, the Ministry of Land and

Resources, replaced by the Ministry

of Natural Resources in 2018, began

systematically assessing the quality

of the country’s soil with every city

required to file annual reports. MARA

set a target of adding 6.66 million

hectares of “high quality farmland”

this year. Pilot projects using rice seeds

Heavy rains in

Henan province

in July last year

affected 2.4 million

acres of crop fields

and wiped out some

farmers’ harvestcomplicating government efforts to

increase grain production. Zhang’s

parents used to grow corn in their

farm in Shaanxi, but they switched

to kiwifruits in the 1990s because it

was more profitable. Their small 0.7

hectare plot of land is located in what

was once a major wheat-growing

area, but “right now, no one in my

hometown grows wheat,” Zhang

says. His parents can earn around 10

times more for their kiwi harvest each

year, despite much higher input costs,

compared to planting wheat.

One reason why it’s hard to profit

that can be planted in seawater have

from grain-farming is the extreme

also been trialed in eastern parts

and hailstorms which damaged his

fragmentation of China’s agricultural

of the country in the hope this can

rice crop: “Normally one shang can

sector: consisting of around 200 million

solve some water scarcity issues in the

yield 9,000 kilograms, [but] because

small family farms averaging less than

country.

of the hail we only got 7,000 to

one hectare in area (compared to just

According to Tan Xiaoming, a rice

8,000.”over 2 million farms averaging 180

farmer in Qidong county, Hunan

Last summer, severe floods in Henan

hectares in the US). This makes the

province, more efficient pesticides

province damaged 2.4 million acres

use of machinery impractical on many

means that while he used to have to

of crops, with nearly half of the

farms, while farmers spend more on

spray his rice fields five or six times

affected fields seeing yields fall 30

seedlings and equipment because

a year, now they only need spraying

percent as a result. This year too,

they can’t buy in bulk. Furthermore,

twice. Wang, however, feels things are

severe flooding in the south damaged

since rural land is owned collectively

getting worse. “The insect and pest

over 39,000 hectares of rice paddies,

by villages, and can only be leased

problem has gotten bigger,” he tells

while record high temperatures this

for limited periods rather than sold,

TWOC, fresh from a six-hour session

summer threatened corn production

scaling up farms remains a difficult and

of spraying pesticides. He also believes

in the north and central regions of the

unprofitable process.

that another policy, which stops

country. In 2020, researchers at Peking

Shen’s two daughters and one son, all

farmers from burning leftover straw in

University and the International Food

fields in order to reduce air pollution,

Policy Research Institute predicted

between 30 and 40 years old now, all

causes the straw to rot, seep into

that under the worst climate change

left the village after middle school and

the soil, and create fertile breeding

scenario—a global rise in average

went to work in textile factories and

grounds for more pests.

temperature of around 4.3 degrees

construction sites. “I hope they don’t

The weather can be another menace

Celsius by 2100—wheat yields in

take up farming…there’s no future in

too, and one that is becoming more

China would decline by 9.4 percent by

farming at home,” he ictable. “In 2021, there was a

2050 without mitigating se, Tan’s two sons, now 30

flood. I didn’t get a penny from the

For farmer Wang, everything

and 20 years old, “have basically never

corn I planted,” says Shen, whose

depends on the weather. “We rely on

done farm work.” After graduating

fields were destroyed. Tan tells TWOC

the heavens to eat,” he says. “This

from vocational middle school, they

that he planted a dozen oil seed

year I planted over 90 mu [6 hectares],

went to work in the prosperous Pearl

camellia trees last year on part of his

I don’t know what the harvest will

River Delta region. Wang’s son is 22

small plot of less than half a hectare,

be like…there may It

and is studying to be a high-speed rail

but they failed to bloom because of a

depends on God.”attendant in Jilin’s provincial capital,

long period of drought. In the 2013

With such uncertainty and rising

Changchun. “He doesn’t have basic

to 2014 season, Wang recalls making

costs, farmers are increasingly looking

knowledge about [farming],” says

almost no profit because of flooding

for alternative livelihoods or hardier,

Wang. “But also, in our village, there’s

more cost-effective crops, further

not one person from his generation at

home farming.”

Issue 4 /2022

43

Wang has considered leaving the

fields himself. Last autumn before the

harvest, he worked at a construction

site in town for two months for 200

yuan a day—but the boss ran off with

the money, leaving Wang to return to

farming, for now. Urbanization has

seen millions move from rural areas

to the cities, leaving fewer people to

work the fields and some land idle.

Now nearly 65 percent of China’s

population live in cities, while only

around 260 million people still actively

work in the fields, many of them

elderly. What this means for the future

of farming is unclear.

Technology could provide some

solutions. Genetically modified

organisms (GMOs) can be more

efficient and give higher-yield crops

with less labor and chemical-use, but

the Chinese public is strongly opposed

to their use, with many suspicious they

might cause health problems (despite

overwhelming scientific evidence

that they are safe), and as yet no

GMO crops have been approved for

commercial planting in China.

China is also investing heavily in

biotechnologies like seed research.

“With these new technologies, there’s

a chance that you can use less input

to produce more,” says Zhang, “But

there’s no guarantee it will happen,

and no one knows how long the

transition will take.”Preventing waste would help. A

2015 report by the Chinese Academy

of Sciences found that residents of

the country’s largest cities, including

Beijing and Shanghai, wasted 17 to

18 million tons of food a year, while

another paper by researchers at the

Chinese Academy of Agricultural

Sciences in the same year found 35

billion kilograms of food in China is

lost during transportation, processing,

and storage. An anti-food waste law,

enacted in April 2021, stipulates fines

of up to 10,000 yuan for restaurants

that encourage customers to over-44order or cause “obvious waste,” while

banning competitive and binge-eating

content online and in other r solution would be to

import more from abroad. China’s

imports have grown over the last few

decades, with the country becoming

a net importer of corn, for example,

in 2010. In 2013, there appeared to

be an acknowledgement that total

self-sufficiency was unfeasible, with

the need for “domestic supply with

moderate imports” introduced in

years, the government has called on

everyone to plant the fields and not

to let any go to waste. Tan has also

begun receiving additional subsidies in

this period for seeds, rice planting, and

to not abandon arable land, though

he claims this only amounts to a few

dozen yuan per mu.

Tan worries that “if farmland falls

into decay, once there’s a natural

disaster or a war, the country will face

a serious food crisis. I think [villagers]

who are still healthy will still farm,

official documents. But the Covid-19

pandemic, as well as deteriorating

relations between China and major

food providers such as the US,

Australia, and Canada, has seen a

reversal. The government hopes

to develop a “Food Silk Road” to

diversify food imports from regions

like Africa and Latin America, but this

will struggle to make up the shortfall

from agricultural giants like the US.

Zhang argues becoming totally

self-sufficient is “impossible” in part

because China simply doesn’t have

enough land to produce all the crops

it needs. With challenges aplenty, no

piece of land can be left unfarmed.

Farmer Tan says that in the past two

even if not much, just enough for

themselves to eat.”

In some areas, the pandemic has

shown the effects that letting the land

lie unfarmed can have in China. At

least in this regard, Wang has been

comparatively lucky: He only needs

to take a nucleic acid test every

three days and he’s free to work his

fields as normal. “When the virus is

prevalent, they make us stay home,

but if it’s spring planting time, they

have to open up,” says Wang. “If no

one is planting, where will the food

come from?”

– ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY TAN YUNFEI (谭云飞) AND CHEN YUANZHU (陈远瞩)