There is growing concern that the foundering condition of soil in China could facilitate a food crisis in the world’s most populated country.
As millions of Chinese farmers migrate toward cities from rural countrysides, the influx of people into urban areas creates a greater demand for meat, grain, and dairy products. But China’s soil is overly-polluted, overworked from years of crop turnout, and heavily artificially fertilized. China’s first pollution census, released earlier this month, even identified farm fertilizers as being a bigger source of contamination in water than factory run-off.
Now the Chinese government says it is creating plans to combat the soil issue, including introducing two strands of genetically modified rice. Outside of the government response, agricultural entrepreneurs are also engaging in cross-border farming – a practice in which Chinese farmers buy land in neighboring countries to grow crops.
The implications of not addressing the soil issue are high for both China and the rest of the world. Domestically, three hundred million to four hundred million people are predicted to move from the countryside to the city over the next 30 years. Globally, China feeds 22% of the world population. Both perspectives make for tall orders, considering China sits on only10% of the planet’s arable land. If the soil of that land cannot produce, experts fear a food crisis will follow.
The solutions, while needed, are also complicated. Han Jun, an expert on rural policy at the Development Research Centre, said “it is possible for us to use less fertilizer, but impossible not to use fertilizer at all…We are now trying to guide farmers to use it in a more scientific way and to use more natural fertilizer from their households.”
“We cannot be complacent. We know supply-and-demand is vulnerable…We have a forced balance now that requires strong intervention by the government. This is a tense balance that can be easily broken.”
Posted by Sara Chupein
