The United States has one quarter of the world GDP, and China has one quarter of the world population. It says it all about the Chinese economy. Of the one quarter world population or almost 1.4 billion strong in China, 900 million are farmers.
You would have guessed that such a large population would impose tremendous pressure on the food supply. I did some googling and find that China has done quite well on food production.
China, a Big Farm by Figures
China has a smaller share of land and arable land compared to the size of the population.
The population density is one of the highest.
But over years China has established an ample self-supply of cereals (rice, wheat, maize, etc.), and has dramatically increased the production share of meat, fruit, vegetables and fish..
..with a trade surplus.
The food gap is closing and people are eating more everyday. I assume the obesity kid summer camps would soon be overcrowded.
10% More for Food Safety
Now the government now has a not-so-ambitious new plan to hike food production by 10% till 2020. The plan plans to maintain the arable land area at 1.8 billion acres, a part that Mr. Mao, a renowned economist, doesn’t quite agree.
I don’t know too much about farming, so my comment probably wouldn’t help. But I found the public sentiment against Mao disturbingly amusing – if property rights per se is a mass, what’s (or whose) there to argue about?
Anyhoo, there’s plenty of opportunities to improve farming yield comparing to Monsanto America and Syngenta Germany, holding all other variables constant.
Poor Farmers, Rich Farmers
Food safety, local and global, seems not an adjacent problem into 2030. The real issue is how to improve the poor farmers’ income.
- In 2005, 949 million live in villages, of which 299 million (23% pop) are farmers.
- Urban income per capita is RMB 15,781 in 2008, while that of villages is RMB 4,761, or 30% of urban.
- GDP of agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, or the so-called Primary Industry, was 11% of total in 2007.
You do the math.
As a comparison, in the U.S. 1.4 million (0.5% pop) works in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting – one person per one big farm, farming with GPS guided John Deeres. The GDP share is 1.2%.
Yes, you can get rich being a farmer.
How to Get There? The short answer is it takes time, the long answer ..
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