Seeds of the future: China's obsession with food security
I’m not talking about Shanghai. I can’t do it. Let’s talk about Xi Jinping’s holiday to Hainan instead.
In recent days, headlines of Chinese newspapers have highlighted Xi Jinping’s trip to Hainan, where he has been inspecting seed laboratories and marine institutes. During his trip he commented that: "To ensure that China's seed resources are self-supporting and under better control, self-reliance must be achieved in seed technology."
This statement links to China’s broader policy of food security and general self-reliance in almost all economic aspects. China wants to make its own everything, including food. Considering it has to feed 20% of the world’s population on just 7% of the world’s farmland, this is no mean feat.
While you may think that the situation in Shanghai is way more newsworthy than Xi’s holiday, I want to focus on food security in China for two reasons:
1) I am SICK of talking about Covid. It’s been three (3) calendar years since this started, and while I feel for the people of Shanghai, I don’t think I have anything valuable to add to the conversation.
2) While I don’t want to talk about the situation in Shanghai AT ALL, I think the stories of people not being able to get food or basic necessities does point to the broader issue of resource and supply chain management when dealing with large populations, which is relevant to today’s newsletter.
I think there’s a valuable discussion to be had about the logistics and feasibility of China’s self-sufficiency aims, which we’ve discussed briefly in a previous newsletter. Today we’ll be talking about the goals of China’s current food security policy, why they feel the need to produce all their own food, and what problems lie in the way of achieving greatness.
China’s food security policy
According to the State Council, China has already made huge progress in food security. China’s per capita food output is around 470 kg, and total food output has been over 650 million tons for four years from 2015. China supplies 95% of its own grain, and has a two-week supply of food reserves for large and medium-sized cities and areas prone to price fluctuation. Not only do poor people not have to worry about starving anymore, but they also have access to greater variety in their diet.
The main aims of the government now are to improve food productivity, especially by improving the output per hectare of land; improve grain reserve management, including monitoring and warning systems to detect depleted supplies; improve logistics for grain transport; work with the global south and other countries on the Belt and Road to improve import systems. As previously stated, China only has 7% of the world’s arable land, and unless they’re planning on invading a big patch of green space somewhere, any increases in production are going to come from technology, not making more space. The government also plans to connect the country’s key grain regions through a “national food security industry belt” (they love a good belt), but says its focus is on improving seed development to create hardy, more prosperous genetically modified crops.
The government also seeks to tackle the practical side of things, i.e. making growing food an attractive prospect for individuals, families and businesses. The state guarantees a minimum level of arable land, guarantees farming incomes and employment for farmers, abolished farming taxes, and works with farmers to modernise farming methodologies, tools, and services. China also wants to transition away from “small-scale, decentralised management into moderate-scale, multi-entity management,” which sounds to me like a dressed-up re-centralisation policy, but who’s to know. According to a Chinese think tank “small farmland plots… impede both food security and the economic development of the agricultural sector.” A study also shows that large-scale farmers produce almost 10% more than ordinary farmers. This would be inline with the CCP’s general policy of bringing everything back under central control, moving away from the free-growth spirit of the 1980s where farmers could work for profit as opposed to simply the good of the nation.
It’s becoming clear that the government doesn’t feel it can afford to take a laissez-faire approach to the food business anymore. China’s population will peak in 2025, and the use of grain for livestock will only continue to increase as people’s taste for more expensive foods increases. The pandemic has also shown that the world can turn upside down almost overnight. As agriculture minister Tang Renjian puts it: “The uncertainty and instability of the external situation has increased significantly. On grain security, we must not take it lightly for one moment.”
Hints as to how seriously China takes its food security have already become apparent at a societal level, as the government has issued strict policies on food waste meant to discourage people from biting off more than they can chew. Restaurants have placed limits on how much people can order during group meals, and new legislation says that owners should charge diners for having to throw away leftovers. Social media channels that show videos of Mukbangs (live eating shows where the hosts consume a lot while chatting with the audience) can be fined up to 100,000 yuan (£10,000) and have their business suspended. The Anti-waste campaign also has a section on the protection of minors, stating that children should be taught not to waste food.
As with concepts like ‘national security’ which back up the CCP’s policies in places like Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong, ‘food security’ has similar roots in China’s recent past. Both international and domestic issues play a role in developing China’s food policies.
Why China craves food security
No-one with knowledge of China’s recent history will wonder why food security is so important to the Chinese government. As one author puts it “While the term “food security” is relatively new to many Chinese, the word “famine” is not.” While China’s most recent and probably most well-known famine was the Great Leap Famine of 1959-62, famine was a relatively commonplace occurrence, even by the turn of the 20th century.
In the State Council’s document, the government fully acknowledges past problems China has had with food security, stating that in the past Chinese people were ‘underfed’ and it is only through the “unremitting campaign of hard work over the past 70 years that has made China basically self-sufficient in food supply.” Indeed, since the 1970s the Food and Agriculture Organisation has relentlessly focused on the issue of food security and its relation to social stability and economic development. Because of the government’s focus on these issues, the Chinese people have had enough to eat since 1978.
But now the issue is not so much having enough to eat on a day-to-day, or even month-to-month basis. Rather, it’s ensuring the long-term supply of food, internal sustainability of food production, and severing reliance on the international supply chain. Grain reserves in particular are closely linked to national security and emergency preparedness, as we can see currently in the case of Shanghai where residents are running out of food and having to organise amongst themselves in order to buy groceries.
Covid-19 definitely kickstarted a more intense campaign to ensure grain security, as global agricultural trade was disrupted by the pandemic, and rifts began to appear between China and other nations about possible origins of the outbreak, vaccinations, and long-term Covid management policies. In what China “perceives to be an increasingly hostile world”, grain security became a top economic priority for 2021, particularly in the area of seed development which is “lagging behind that of developed countries,” and of available cultivated land, on which “China might need to spend more than 250 billion yuan (US$38.7 billion)” to expand.
China’s moves to a harder foreign policy - particularly with developed nations like the US and Australia on whom it relies for food imports - are deliberate. Thus policymakers are aware that the more they push others away and make new enemies, the more they will have to rely on friendly relations with developing nations in the global south, as well as their own domestic resources. If China is not willing to compromise on its international political and economic stance, it will have to work twice as hard to make sure it doesn’t need anyone’s help when it comes to dealing with a major disaster. If soybean trade with the US succumbs to a trade war, China’s supply will have to come from elsewhere, whether that’s from Brazil or from home.
And they’ll have to figure out the details sooner rather than later.
Roadblocks
Throughout the State Council document on food security, the phrase “China makes sure it relies on itself for food supply” comes up again and again (and again). But is China really that close to achieving its goal of food self-sufficiency?
One research paper points out that although China has done well to improve food security over the past 30 years, “there are serious problems in the aspects of food safety and quality, environmental sustainability, and social stability. To achieve long-term food security, China has to tackle the widespread issues of unsafe foods and foods of dubious quality, environmental pollution and degradation, and the establishment of a social security system.”
Food scandals in China have always made international news, and unsafe foods continue to be an issue, made more complicated by an opaque political system that makes reporting and fixing the issues difficult. Soil degradation and low soil quality across the country have led to problems such as oil salinization, soil acidification, and desertification. These issues lead to the accumulation of heavy metals such as cadmium (often found in rice) and a reduction in the amount of usable arable land. Flooding in China's most productive regions also continues to be a major cause of fluctuation in grain supply, as do a variety of different diseases. “African Swine Fever forced a major culling of the hog herd in China in 2019 and the 2020 floods have hurt efforts to rebuild them.” In the same year, China’s corn crops were plagued by Fall Armyworm.
The State Council itself acknowledges problems within China’s food-producing infrastructure: “Agricultural infrastructure is comparatively weak, and capacity for disaster prevention and relief must be improved. China will find itself under considerable pressure to maintain steady grain production… Transregional grain flows will increase, and there is still the risk of dramatic fluctuations in the grain market.”
Another huge problem is inefficiency in the food-production and consumption processes. According to one study, “about one-sixth of the total grain produced in China is wasted annually in the production, processing and transportation of food because of poor equipment and logistical issues.” As stated earlier, there are other problems such as consumer waste that the government is actively trying to deal with by changing consumer behaviour.
Because of issues like these, it seems like China is becoming more dependent, not less, on global supplies of food. In 2020 for example, “the country still imported 29.6 percent more grain from a year prior during the January-November period… In terms of weight, the imports of soybean, corn and wheat rose 17.5 percent, 122.8 per cent and 150.6 per cent, respectively, in the first 11 months of the year.”
These problems are wide-ranging and tough to deal with, but not impossible to overcome. Considering China is an authoritarian country, all that remains to be seen is how dedicated the government and party are to tackling these solutions. And this in turn depends on how important food security is to China’s long-term policy goals more generally.
A broader goal
I believe the Chinese government and CCP will continue to push hard in this area, especially as Xi has been very visible and vocal on the topic, and most recent policies touch on the concept of self-sufficiency, if not on food directly then at least more generally. As stated in their own Food Security outline document: “In view of domestic and global food security, China will forge ahead along its own path.”
The policy of self-sufficiency in food links to China's broader economic policy goals. Apparently, China’s Premier Li Keqiang has been running up and down the country shouting at domestic producers to get their act together, ensuring the supply of energy and the operation of transport networks, as well as keeping prices stable. His calls come as companies struggle with rising commodity and raw materials prices. The government has introduced tax credits and VAT refunds to help deal with the issue, emphasising that a stable economy and steady GDP growth of at least 5% remain the target.
These are the foundations of China’s planned unified national market, creating a socialist market economy that is as robust as it is large. The government wants an efficient and internally competitive market that breaks up small circuits or large holding companies and opens them up to the national economy, making it fairer for smaller businesses and employees. This will also help ensure security in other areas - coal shortages last year showed the precarious nature of China’s supply chain, and the current Russia-Ukraine situation shows the dangers of relying on outside sources for necessities.
As we discussed in a previous newsletter, China’s five-year plan is focused on strengthening its dual-circulation system - internal and external - to reduce China’s reliance on overseas markets and strengthen the domestic economy. As I stated in that newsletter: “This not only means boosting domestic consumption, but also rapidly developing technologies such as semiconductors and other high-tech products so they no longer need to be imported.”
China’s long-term goal is to become a nation that can rely entirely on itself. The idea is that if the global order were to collapse tomorrow, it would still survive, and perhaps even thrive, while other developed countries spiralled into chaos. At that point, China would regain its status as global leader, as outlined in the CCP’s plan for national rejuvenation, whereby China would not only surpass developed nations, but supplant them on the global stage entirely.
This much is evident in government calls for “stronger protection of intellectual property rights in breeding, and support for leading seed companies to establish commercial breeding systems.” The government wants China-owned seeds made by domestic companies, not too dissimilar to its production of domestic Covid vaccines, which it was then able to export to other countries while rejecting the Pfizer/Moderna alternatives. Shockingly, strong government interest in seed firms has caused their share prices to soar.
I guess even in a situation as pressing as this, there’s still time to make a profit.
Sources
China Daily, Xi inspects South China's Hainan province
China Daily, Xi stresses role of 'Chinese seeds' in ensuring food security
China’s State Council, Food Security in China
Li Guoxiang, 2020 年中国粮食生产能力及其国家粮食安全保障程度分析 [An analysis of China’s 2020 grain production ability and the degree of national food security]
Nature, A look at food security in China
People’s Daily, China to build unified national market to tackle persistent issues, enhance economic security
People’s Daily, Chinese premier calls for stabilization of employment, prices to shore up economy
People’s Daily, Companies grapple with rising costs
People’s Daily, Xi inspects south China's Hainan Province
The Diplomat, China, Food Security and Geopolitics
Zhangyue Zhou, Achieving food security in China: past three decades and beyond