Op-Ed Contributors

Nation at food security crossroads

By Fan Shenggen (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-09 08:02

Although its agricultural output faces some weather-related fluctuations now, its domestic food supplies are secure. Recent floods and landslides have led to crop loss, but these localized incidents will not reduce its total agricultural output significantly. Their impact on agricultural prices is not expected to be large either, because of the government's existing price stabilizing regulations.

Moreover, it can meet its crop deficits by releasing some stocks from the national grain reserves, which remain very high.

Natural resource constraints and climate change will put additional pressure on the country's agriculture in the long run. Water scarcity, land degradation and extreme weather are increasingly threatening its sustainable agricultural production.

But agriculture offers great opportunities for adaptation to climate change and mitigation strategies, too. While China has taken big strides in addressing climate change, it should increase its investment in research and development (R&D), as well as irrigation and water-saving technologies. And given the large regional differences in the impact of climate change, mitigation and adaptation policies should be customized to local conditions.

China still has room to increase its food production to ensure national and global food security. Policymakers should build on their past efforts, which are laudable, to increase agricultural productivity with new policies and investments in R&D and modern technology.

To sustain high levels of agricultural growth, smallholders should be given incentives such as secure land rights. China's success in agriculture-led broad-based development and its growing role in the global economy have important ramifications for other developing countries, too.

Hence, it should provide agricultural aid and know how to such countries to help them become food secure and strike mutually beneficial partnerships with them. This will help it ensure national and global food security.

The author is director general of International Food Policy Research Institute, based in Washington D.C.

(China Daily 09/09/2010 page9)