Agriculture Land Shrinking in China

Growing population, industrialization and rapid economic growth are putting unprecedented pressure on China’s agriculture resources, and have become a threat to food security in the country and the world.

According to China’s national land survey figures released recently, total arable land in the country stood at around 135.4 million hectares at the end of 2012. This is still about 15.4 million hectares above the “red line” of a minimum 120 million hectares earmarked to ensure food security in China. However, pollution of land and water are eroding agriculture land in China. Coupled with increasing population, China’s per capita arable area now stands at around 0.1 hectare, almost half of the global average of around 0.2 hectare.

According to government officials in China, it was found from the survey that about 3 million hectares of land is now unsuitable for rice cultivation due to heavy contamination by poisonous heavy metals in soil and water. Officials say that per capita arable area in China continues to decline due to a growing population and rapid urbanization.

The Chinese government has banned cultivation of rice in polluted land, and is planning to spend billions of yuan to reduce pollution levels in soil and water by 2015. Government efforts are likely to get a boost by the World Bank’s approval of four loans totaling $520 million to China last week. The loans are meant to support developmental goals in China, mainly in the control of agricultural pollution and climate-resilient sustainable agriculture.

China is the world’s largest rice producer, but the country became the world’s largest rice importer in the last few years mainly due to high production costs. Sources say that rice yield in China is reaching its peak and it is difficult to see China’s rice production increase in coming years. However, China’s increasing dependency on food grains and rice may jeopardize food security in some African rice importers.

ORYZA

12 Comments on "Agriculture Land Shrinking in China"

dissident on Tue, 31st Dec 2013 12:44 am 



They will spend billions of dollars on what? If they want to stop mercury contamination of both their land and the sea they need to shut down their coal power plants. I don’t see any massive effort to shut them down by 2015 or even by 2030. Right now they are opening two new ones every week.

Arthur on Tue, 31st Dec 2013 3:11 pm 



In the winter of 1918/1919 the British imposed a naval food blockade on Germany, in order to finally get this country on it’s knees. Ca. one million people died as a result of this, a rather unknown detail about WW1. A few years later a certain Austrian nobody, doing time in the slammer in 1923, contemplated the geostrategic situation of Germany and decided that what was needed was ‘Lebensraum’ in the east, notably the Ukraine, in order to prevent the disastrous effects of hostile food blockades in the future. He was so stupid to write this stuff down in his Mein Kampf blog. In 1923 he could have these thoughts since Russia/Ukraine were down because of the raging civil war, so that even a weak 4 year old Polish state could advance militarily as far east as Kiev. In the late thirties, the USSR meanwhile had become a military super power, and no thought of ‘Lebensraum in the east’ was ever considered during Hitler’s rule since 1933, but the Nuremberg judges were so kind to undust his blog and use it’s content to blame Germany for the war in the east.

Today, China could very well be tempted to go hunting for ‘Lebensraum’ to provide for it’s 1300 million citizens, crammed in a space equal to that of the US, with a lot (50%?) of useless desert. And there are quit a few interesting candidates that could be considered for takeover, for instance after a certain unnamed super power will have retreated into isolationism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area

Russia – 17m km2 – 144m
Canada – 10m km2 – 35m
China – 9.7m km2 – 1362m
USA – 9.6m km2 – 317m
Australia – 7.7m km2 – 23m
Kazachstan – 2.7m km2 – 17m
Mongolia – 1.6m km2 – 2.7m

As long as Russia will remain a nuclear armed power, there is little chance that China would attempt to snatch Siberia away. But Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Australia are a different matter altogether. If the resource depletion story in the broadest sense will get worse, the pressure on the Chinese leadership could force them to take drastic steps, similar to what the Japanese leadership did in 1942, when faced with an oil shortage at home (due to the imposed US oil embargo), in desperation decided for an unplanned southwards expansion of their empire into the Philippines and Indonesia, at the inevitable cost of becoming an enemy of the US and Britain.

mike on Tue, 31st Dec 2013 5:38 pm 



I hope you are going to write a book on twentieth century history Arthur. The world really is waiting for your insights. For too long we have been fed myths; at last we have The One who can give us the true facts. I have to say, though, what is disappointing about your brief summary of the Fuehrer’s programme for the salvation of western civilisation is your ommission of any reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the international Jewish conspiracy. Why so coy? Are keeping it muted because you scared folk might suppose you are viciously anti-semitic?

robertinget on Tue, 31st Dec 2013 7:16 pm 



Arthur, your revisionist history make interesting reading.Kinda like FOX ‘News’.
Lack of food in Germany did not kill a million, ‘Spanish Flu’ did.

The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but an estimated 10% to 20% of those who were infected died. With about a third of the world population infected, this case-fatality ratio means 3% to 6% of the entire global population died.[29] Influenza may have killed as many as 25 million people in its first 25 weeks. Older estimates say it killed 40–50 million people,[4] while current estimates say 50–100 million people worldwide were killed. “Wikipedia”

I’m sure Art just forgot about this holocaust too.

British Empire politicians also thought present day desert of Saudi Arabia
sort of a wasteland, before WW/1.

While I disagree with the politics
of the current Israeli Administration, we
can’t deny what agricultural miracles
drip irrigation did for that useless desert. Yeah, yeah, they stole the water
but at least they didn’t waste it.

Like Saudi Arabia, Cold War era USSR,
China is buying grains everywhere it’s
able. AS with oil, China must compete
on world markets with among others, Japan, the textbook case of a population outgrowing its farmland. (long before Fukushima rendered another AG region poisonous)

This business of trying to grown food
on dangerously polluted, un-irrigated
mountainous land is, to put it mildly
unrewarding. More excitement, money is
almost always to be had in ‘the city’.

Arthur on Tue, 31st Dec 2013 8:59 pm 



About the blockade:

From Pat Buchanan’s book “Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War”(p78):

http://www.digitalsurvivors.com/archives/images/thesuccessofchurchillsstarvationblockade.png

Quote from same book (p79): Its architect and chief advocate had been the First Lord of the Admiralty. His aim, said Churchill, was to “starve the whole population – men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound – into submission”

Same page…

On March 3, 1939… Churchill rose in the Commons to declare , “We are enforcing the blockade with rigour, And Germany is very near starvation”

Nr. of estimated deaths:

mises . org/daily/4308

In December 1918, the National Health Office in Berlin calculated that 763,000 persons had died as a result of the blockade by that time; the number added to this in the first months of 1919 is unknown.

And the only reason why this happened was because Germany made better products than the British.

Northwest Resident on Tue, 31st Dec 2013 11:10 pm 



Arthur, if you rely on anything that Pat Buchanan says or writes to backup your assertions, then you are doomed to ultimate failure. Pat Buchanan is a right-wing extremist, and as such, suffers from the same lack of insight, the same Ayn Rand-like beliefs and other warped perpectives that the the entire American right-wing suffers from, group-think style. If you’re going to quote Pat Buchanan, then you should also look into the fine literary and highly intellectual works of Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Rush Limbaugh and a host of others who ride in the same gang as Pat Buchanan. Mr. Culture Warrior himself, Pat Buchanan. ROFL.

Arthur on Wed, 1st Jan 2014 2:25 am 



Djeez, you have a lot to learn about your own political landscape… Palin, Cruz and Limbaugh are total lightweights and despicable lackeys of the Lobby. Buchanan in contrast has a deep sense for history and is by no means a servant of the Lobby. And why on earth do you bring up that sinister countess Dracula, Ayn Rand? Buchanan is a Catholic conservative, and as such a loser, which he will implicitly admit. There is nothing to conserve about America. He knows he lost the culture war and that America and the West has no future. He thinks America could be gone by 2025, but I think that is optimistic. Of all formerly white nations, America will be the first to approach third world status and for this reason alone will loose its prestige and political gravitas and military and economic clout and will probably fall apart. Buchanan agrees and openly said so, in contrast to the PC clowns in Washington, who are ruining the US. That’s why Buchanan was banned from the MSM, a badge of honor, really. Let’s push the West into the abyss and start all over again.

Northwest Resident on Wed, 1st Jan 2014 4:50 am 



Arthur, Buchanan is a loon, a racist, one of those holier-than-thou bigots who rails against homosexuality and immigration and anything else that violates his religious sensibilities. He twists facts and reality to suit his ends. And so do you. No wonder you are a Buchanan fan.

Arthur on Wed, 1st Jan 2014 7:58 am 



Yeah, Buchanan is a terrible racist. Here a picture of him and his KKK running mate:

http://onlineathens.com/images/081200/reform_party.jpg

To be fair to Pat, he is anti-war and anti-imperialist in a sea of warmongering thugs. Of course he is against immigration, because historically it is a precursor to genocide, ask the Indians. At least in South-Africa, segregation is almost complete, unlike in the US, and that is why the coming fall of the US is going to be such a drama, exactly as Orlov predicts. Because the rightwingers and Constitutionalists will want to secede from the US third world in status nascendi, but the Lobby, their for this revolutionary purpose imported third world proletariate and little white guys making a living of calling other people racist and homophobic, will attempt to prevent that and try to create a new USSR on US soil. Combine that with 200 million guns and all the ingredients are there, necessary to make Yugoslavia and Iraq look like a toddlers birthday party. Now THAT is a very good reason to set up shop in the Philipines.

Arthur on Wed, 1st Jan 2014 10:48 am 



http://youtu.be/1_Ap_M_hisg

Buchanan explaining the future of balkanization of the US to a very interested RussiaToday. Where every African with a spare few thousand dollar desperately undertakes the extremely dangerous journey over sea to Europe, Northwest Resident tries to sell the idea that Americans should equally desperately undertake the opposite journey, INTO the third world, otherwise he is going to call you names. You can’t make this stuff up. The American middle class is on the verge of becoming wiped out because of all the transfers of wealth (Obama care, bailouts for sub prime mortages and futile wars on behalf of the Israel Lobby, that runs the place since 1913). But the real blow is going to be dealt by China and the rest of the world, by sabotaging the gigantic free lunch called the dollar. Let’s see how strong the cohesion of the US is, without the handouts and if the average incomes will dive with 40% or more, exactly as in Greece. According Bernanke pall Laurence Kotlikoff the financial situation of the US is worse than Greece. Last week we witnessed flash mobs of 600 and 400 in Florida and Brooklyn. It is only a matter of time before these mobs will surpass the 1000 and difficult to distinguish from an army. Let’s see how right the ‘loon racist’ Buchanan has been with his warnings over the past decades with book titles like ‘Death of the West’ or ‘Suicide of a Superpower’. That’s going to happen, long before peak fossil, likely anywhere between today and 2020.

Kenz300 on Wed, 1st Jan 2014 4:51 pm 



We all need clean air to breathe, save water to drink and safe food to eat. Pollution will slowly kill us all.

Bee colony collapse is the canary in the coal mine for the human race.

FriedrichKling on Wed, 1st Jan 2014 10:55 pm 



Northwest Resident:

Arthur is simply quoting from original sources that appeared in Buchanan’s book. You can’t argue with facts.