Is Yield Increase Sufficient to Achieve Food Security in China?

Abstract

Increasing demand for food, driven by unprecedented population growth and increasing consumption, will keep challenging food security in China. Although cereal yields have substantially improved during the last three decades, whether it will keep thriving to meet the increasing demand is not known yet. Thus, an integrated analysis on the trends of crop yield and cultivated area is essential to better understand current state of food security in China, especially on county scale. So far, yield stagnation has extensively dominated the main cereal-growing areas across China. Rice yield is facing the most severe stagnation that 53.9% counties tracked in the study have stagnated significantly, followed by maize (42.4%) and wheat (41.9%). As another important element for production sustainability, but often neglected is the planted area patterns. It has been further demonstrated that the loss in productive arable land for rice and wheat have dramatically increased the pressure on achieving food security. Not only a great deal of the planted areas have stagnated since 1980, but also collapsed. 48.4% and 54.4% of rice- and wheat-growing counties have lost their cropland areas to varying degrees. Besides, 27.6% and 35.8% of them have retrograded below the level of the 1980s. The combined influence (both loss in yield and area) has determined the crop sustainable production in China to be pessimistic for rice and wheat, and consequently no surprise to find that more than half of counties rank a lower level of production sustainability. Therefore, given the potential yield increase in wheat and maize, as well as substantial area loss of rice and wheat, the possible targeted adaptation measures for both yield and cropping area is required at county scale. Moreover, policies on food trade, alongside advocation of low calorie diets, reducing food loss and waste can help to enhance food security.

Tracking the spatio-temporal change of cropping intensity in China during 2000–2015

“…The average grain yield increased from about 5000 kg/ ha in 2000 to 6000 kg/ha in 2013, which can be largely attributed to increased investment in agriculture . However, a large gap remains between grain production and demand in China (Wei et al 2015) and about 1.2×10 8 t of grain (20% of grain production in China) was imported in 2015.…”

Attribution of yield change for rice-wheat rotation system in China to climate change, cultivars and agronomic management in the past three decades

“…However, the growth rates of rice and wheat yields have become stagnated in some major production areas of China since 2000 (Wei et al 2015). The stagnation of crop yield has also documented in South Asia and Northern Europe (Timsina and Humphreys 2006;Wiesmeier et al 2015).…”

The consequences of soil degradation in China: a review

“…Although there has been a significant improvement in cereal yields over the last few years (Figure 4), it is uncertain whether this upward trend will con- tinue (Wei et al 2015). According to an official report released in 2016, China could experience a drop in wheat production for the first time in 12 years (Xu 2016).…”