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J OF CHIN POLIT SCI (2009) 14:4980
DOI 10.1007/s11366-008-9036-4
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Jerry McBeath & Jenifer Huang McBeath
Published online: 22 November 2008# Journal of Chinese Political Science/Association for Chinese Politcal Science 2008
Abstract This article considers the immediate forces influencing Chinas food system and food security. By immediate is meant events of the reform period, from the late 1970s to 2008. It begins by asking the question that has preoccupied specialists since the publication of Lester Browns Who Will Feed China? in 1995: How much arable land does China have? Is that land area sufficient to insure grain sufficiency? To insure food security? The article focuses on the human pressures on the food production environment, and then treats the effects of socioeconomic change: land, air, and water degradation. The core of the article examines six responses of the state to both perceived and actual environmental stressors: policy restricting arable land conversion, Chinas one-child policy, investment in irrigation systems, the SouthNorth Water Diversion Project, large-scale afforestation and reforestation campaigns, and the program to convert marginal agricultural lands to forests and grasslands.
Keywords Food System . Food Security. Arable Land . Urbanization . Economic Development . Erosion . Deforestation . Desertification . Land Pollution . Air Pollution . Water Sufficiency. Water Pollution . Ocean Pollution .
One-Child Policy . SouthNorth Water Diversion Project . Afforestation . Reforestation . Slope Land Conversion Program (Grain to Green)
The Problem of Food Security and Environmental Change
Food is the material basis to human survival, and in each nation-state, providing a system for the development, production, and distribution of food and its security is a primary national objective. Many forces have influenced the food security of peoples since ancient times, with particular challenges from natural disasters (floods,
J. McBeath (*) : J. H. McBeath
University of Alaska Faribanks, 1777 Red Fox Drive, Fairbanks, AK 99709, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Environmental Stressors and Food Security in China
50 J. Mcbeath, J. H. Mcbeath
famines, drought, and pestilence) and growing populations globally. From the late twentieth century to the early twenty-first, however, analysts have riveted their attention on environmental change and crises, for example pollution of arable land and water, insufficiency of water, deforestation, desertification, and over-fishing among others. Our focus is on the...