Overview
This is a study of China ' s national long-term food security, focusing on how China will avoid national chronic grain shortages that, in the past, have led to widespread famine. It evaluates the storage program and other alternatives to address the problems of transitory food insecurity from drought or other seasonal calamity. It discusses national food security constraints and investments required to maintain total factor productivity growth of 1.0 percent a year. The report ' s overall objective is to identify constraints to increased domestic food production and to suggest how China could efficiently achieve food security in the early decades of the next century. The study models and projects food supply and demand to 2020. Its secondary objectives are to identify and evaluate: 1) factors that most influenced agricultural growth over the reform period; 2) physical and technical constraints as well as solutions to domestic production increases; 3) policy and institutional constraints to efficient domestic marketing and international trading; 4) infrastructure constraints to domestic and international marketing; and 5) the potential of the international market to supply incremental gain.Synopsis
This is a study of China ' s national long-term food security, focusing on how China will avoid national chronic grain shortages that, in the past, have led to widespread famine. It evaluates the storage program and other alternatives to address the problems of transitory food insecurity from drought or other seasonal calamity. It discusses national food security constraints and investments required to maintain total factor productivity growth of 1.0 percent a year. The report ' s overall objective is to identify constraints to increased domestic food production and to suggest how China could efficiently achieve food security in the early decades of the next century. The study models and projects food supply and demand to 2020. Its secondary objectives are to identify and evaluate: 1) factors that most influenced agricultural growth over the reform period; 2) physical and technical constraints as well as solutions to domestic production increases; 3) policy and institutional constraints to efficient domestic marketing and international trading; 4) infrastructure constraints to domestic and international marketing; and 5) the potential of the international market to supply incremental gain.