CHINA: The emerging story  of their food policy

OR

150 yrs of UK food  policy in 1/10^th the time...

Food security extremely important in China because they are only a generation away from the famine of the ‘Great Leap Forward’  when at least 30 million (and reliable estimates of 45m)  died of starvation. Chinese culture is underpinned by importance of food, with “have you eaten your rice yet?” a version of our “How are you?”.The Communist Party will make sure that everybody is fed. To many people being fed is probably more important than having a vote. Having a fat child used to be a status symbol- a “little Emperor”, something the new breed of diet and health will have to address.

China is the world’s leading rice producer; its area under cultivation is much less than India - but its yields are more than double and heavily dependent on chemical fertiliser; rapid urban sprawl is eating up good agricultural land. China are industrialising at great speed, with migration of mainly women from fields to factories Just as other countries did, they want to feed that industrial population as cheaply as possible – so they can keep their wages costs below all others. So the land that they once cultivated closely is now starting to go into disrepair. I could see Convolvulus sp (Bindweed) growing over orchards in the countryside near Guanzhou – one of the newly emerging cities with over 10 million people. It isn’t just food they want, it is cheap food – just as with UK.

The UK relied on Empire (and still do), but China do not have similar plans for colonisation. Instead, they prefer ‘soft power’. However, without the bother of elections every few years,  the Communist Party sees itself as here to stay and can plan ahead. Compare that with our governments ever more reliant of volatile global food markets, and inability to see beyond the next election. Even our retailers, who are here to stay, still think they will be able to pick up the phone in 20 years’ time and get lettuces flown in from Africa.

The Chinese will not rely on the market. That is after all is what puts them in opposition to capitalism. So they see it as one of the main priorities is to guarantee, not guestimate, cheap food supplies for the foreseeable future.  And they are not going to gamble that on the food markets. Already we can see various ways they are doing this:

Externally

1.       Attracting attention is land grabbing. They have taken over 3 mill hectares – often in Africa and dev3eloping countries but also in New Zealand and Australia.  But they are not relying on that.

2.       They are building the world’s largest port (Acu) in Brazil just outside Rio de Janeiro. This 'Highway to China' is built to suck/shovel soya and meat out from the great plains of Brazill. This is not particularly an issue about the Amazon. 

3.       China have also purchased several of the biggest one-day sales of grain from US. in last few years.mSometimes the sales have been secret, perhaps via Cargill who engineered the Russian sales 20 years previously, and has a presence in China.

They are clearly using a variety of ways. This is as near the marketplace we can see. They cannot go into the market looking for a million dollars worth of grain – prices would rocket overnight, they are not that daft.

Internally

1.       There is debate whether China is going to be more organic, despite the heavy use of nitrogen fertiliser.  There is not much sign that they are, as the standards required are very difficult for small farmers. There will be a bit of a market for ‘Green Food’ – what we would call organic. GM is on the agenda, but apart from cotton, doesn’t seem much uptake.

2.       They are investing in urban agriculture – not playing with it like we do in UK, but investing serious amounts of money inside the cities – so that Beijing – 2X population of London and 10 area is providing 40% of its food – compared with very little in London, despite efforts to get 2012 plots for the Olympics this year. Our cities grew up with gardens on their doorstep – Kent for London,  Evesham valley for Birmingham, Chorley the orchard from Manchester. In China they are growing in the cities reconstructing this in modern circumstances. They – like our city gardens, focus on fruit and vegetables to grow near the centres. The soya, grain and rice can be bought in.

This makes sense in terms of the environment. The Chinese government sees carbon reduction as a priority, although espousing outside monitoring. Our food footprint can be reduced by eating healthily (20%, local !0%, vegan – another r5% and organic 2% (see 'Our Health, Our Environment'). Going for local fruit n veg saves about 1/3 of the food footprint.

Presumably there are others of providing food security (does anybody know of others?) which would be worth chasing up. But gambling on the market is likely to be only ever peripheral. It would seem that they would put much more reliance on thier GuanXi - a prominent idea to emphasise the relationship between people. Guanxi' can be also used to describe a network of contacts, which an individual can call upon when something needs to be done, and through which he or she can exert influence on behalf of another'.

In which case, what does that mean for those global markets we pay homage to?. While there can be price hikes, as in recent years, there may also be price lows – as was always the norm. Can we expect lots more money to flow into the food markets from China? Not really. They are not going to rely on that to achieve their future food security. (Discuss!)

So while we looked to China to produce food ‘more sustainably’, with its history of making the most from the land,  they lool less like investing in the difficult terrains that supplied them before.. They know that in moving to industrialisation ‘forever’, they have moved from seeing farming as the bedrock upon which to build the nation’s capital; they now treat their farming as secondary to the industrial process. Just like we do.

That industrial population is showing signs of wanting more than a job, with strikes at Honda and 57,000 ‘official’ protests elsewhere in recent years prompting concerns that the government needs to do more. Clearly better  food (including more meat) is an option. There are many ethical issues relating to food safety and authenticity - pesticide use, food grown in polluted areas, poor hygiene standards in food stalls, fake foods, many cases of food poisoning driven by cost reduction. Fear of food safety shows in restaurants, bydipping spoon in tea as sterilisation proxy. witnessed by milk contamined by melamine causing child deaths a few years ago. A few years ago there was milk contamined by melamine causing child deaths, resulting in the execution of those involved. The signs are that the Chinese trust the big multinationals for the safety of their food, rather than their own. There are opportunities for Western food investment, with a growth of fast food outlets - now 1000 KFC and 850 McDonalds. See Tesco in Guangzhou

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