China’s ability to feed a fifth of the world’s population will become tougher because of land degradation, urbanization and over-reliance on fossil fuels and fertilizer, a UN envoy warned on Thursday as grain and meat prices climbed on global markets.
With memories still fresh of the famines that killed tens of millions of people in the early 1960s, the Chinese government has gone to great lengths to ensure the world’s biggest population has enough to eat, but its long-term self-sufficiency was questioned by Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food.
“The shrinking of arable land and the massive land degradation threatens the ability of the country to maintain current levels of agricultural production, while the widening gap between rural and urban is an important challenge to the right to food,” De Schutter said at the end of a trip to China.
PHOTO: AFP
His main concern was the decline of soil quality because of fertilizers, pollution and drought. He noted that 37 percent of China’s territory was degraded and 8.2 million hectares of arable land has been lost since 1997 to cities, industrial parks, natural disasters and forestry programs.
Further pressure has come from an increasingly carnivorous diet, which has meant more grain is needed to feed livestock. The combination is driving up food inflation. In the past year, rice has gone up by 13 percent, wheat by 9 percent, chicken by 17 percent, pork by 13 percent and eggs by 30 percent.
“This is not a one-off event. The causes are structural,” the envoy said. “The recent food price hikes in the country are a harbinger of what may be lying ahead.”
With climate change expected to increase price volatility and cut agricultural productivity by 5 percent to 10 percent by 2030, De Schutter said it was essential for China to wean itself off fossil fuel-intensive farming and adopt more sustainable agricultural techniques, including organic production, and to make even better use of its two great strengths: a huge strategic grain reserve and a large rural population.
He said other countries should learn from China’s food reserve, which accounts for 40 percent of the nation’s 550 million tonne grain supply and is released to minimize the impact of market price fluctuations.
He also cautioned against a shift toward industrial-scale farming, which increases economic competitiveness at the cost of natural productivity. However, he acknowledged this may prove difficult as more of China’s 200 million farmers move to the cities.
The widening rural-urban gap has hit supply and demand of food in other ways. Nationwide nutrition levels have risen, but the growing income disparity has left sharp discrepancies in access to food.
While some poor rural families in western China scrape by with two meals a day, wealthy urban households on the eastern seaboard eat so well that they are prone to the “rich diseases” of obesity and diabetes.
In his report to the Chinese government and the UN, De Schutter also raised the case of Tibetan and Mongolian nomads who have been relocated from the grasslands under a controversial resettlement scheme and pressed Beijing to ensure that consumers have the freedom to complain when food safety is compromised.
He spoke specifically about Zhao Lianhai (趙連海), a former food-safety worker who was jailed last month for organizing a campaign for compensation over a contaminated milk scandal that left 300,000 ill and killed at least six babies.
“I’m concerned this will have a chilling effect,” he said. “You cannot protect the right to food without the right to freedom of expression and organization.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese