China's quest for food security is bound to be a long drawn saga

In recent years, the growth in China's food consumption has outpaced its domestic supply, forcing the government to import large volumes of agricultural products every week to satisfy its 1.4 billion population. China is now the leading purchaser of soybeans, corn, wheat, rice, beef, pork, barley and sorghum, and it is also one of the top buyers of poultry.

China's economic growth in the past couple of decades has put a lot of pressure on the country's food supply chain. In 1998, China's gross domestic product crossed $1-trillion mark for the first time. In a span of 24 years, the country's GDP is estimated at $18 trillion in 2022, making it the second-largest economy in the world behind the US.

According to the US Department of Agriculture's economic research report, China's rising income and living standards, increasing urbanization and food safety concerns have fueled the surge in the country's agricultural imports in the last 20 years. As incomes rose, the average Chinese diet changed to include more meat, dairy and processed foods, while grain consumption declined. In the past 20 years, per capita consumption of poultry meat increased 32%, soybean oil consumption more than quadrupled and fluid milk intake more than tripled, the USDA said.

Food security threats

Being the world's leading importer of food is not a tag Beijing wants in its quest to compete with the US. China knows all too well about the vulnerabilities associated with depending on foreign food supplies.

In 2018, when the African swine fever -- a disease fatal to pigs -- spread across the country, the administration had to cull nearly 60% of its hog population. By late 2019, local pork prices spiked to a record high and pulled up overall food prices. Eventually, to satisfy local demand of the staple, the government had to import a lot of expensive pork from the US.

If that was not enough, the US-China trade spat that began in May 2018 exposed Beijing's over-reliance on US food supplies. Since then, the Xi administration has tried to diversify its food sources and turned towards South America, especially Brazil.

China's vulnerabilities on food imports were further laid bare by the double blow of COVID-19 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Food security is not a new issue to China. It has been the most important topic in the country for the better part of the last 100 years.

Since the early 20th century, the country has witnessed seven famines which claimed tens of millions of lives. The worst of these catastrophes, infamously called the Great Chinese Famine, took place during 1959-61. This tragic event also has the distinction of being the largest famine in human history, claiming up to 30 million lives.

While most famines originate from severe droughts, many historians attribute this tragedy to the government's rapid industrialization policy at the cost of agriculture, known as the Great Leap Forward. During this period, millions of farmers were diverted toward metal mining and industrialization, leading to a sharp decline in agricultural production. China's grain reserves started dwindling, chaos in food supply chain ensued, mass starvation and resentment followed.

This was the period when China learned a harsh lesson and realized how food diplomacy shapes people governance.

In his re-election speech during the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on Oct. 16 2022, President Xi Jinping mentioned food security several times.

"We must reinforce the foundations for food security on all fronts," Xi said.

More from his speech below:

We will ensure that both party committees and governments assume responsibility for ensuring food security and that China's total area of farmland does not fall below the redline of 120 million hectares. We will work to gradually develop all permanent basic cropland into high-standard cropland. We will invigorate the seed industry, support the development of agricultural science, technology, and equipment, and refine the mechanisms for ensuring the incomes of grain growers and for compensating major grain-producing areas. With these efforts, we will ensure that China's food supply remains firmly in its own hands.

Challenges in attaining food security

Ever since Xi's re-election speech, agricultural ministry officials have been repeatedly citing his food security mission in their farm policies and announcements.

The agricultural ministry has announced some key decisions, such as expanding farmlands, technology intervention in raising crop yields, research and development on producing saline-alkali-tolerant varieties of crops, import diversification and reducing the usage of imported crops in animal feed mix.

The Xi administration is also turning back the clock and revitalizing the rural economy through enhanced rural financing and stepping-up loan support to entice people toward farming.

But is it too little too late to feed 1.4 billion people without foreign supplies coming in weekly? Most likely.

China faces formidable challenges in attaining self-sufficiency in food supply chain.

Global warming has made China the focal point of natural disasters, such as floods and droughts, limiting the country's farm production. Another impending issue facing the Xi administration is the availability of land resources. Despite its colossal size of 9.6 million square kilometers, China has only 13% of arable land, according to the World Bank data.

A major portion of the country's land resource has saline-alkali content, making it difficult to produce crops. Rapid urbanization has also negatively impacted agriculture as it is much more profitable to lease out land for commercial purpose than ploughing the fields.

Not surprisingly, China is forecast to remain world's top food importer in the coming years, according to the US Department of Agriculture's long-term projections.

This means the government has its hands full and quoting Xi's speech every day is not going to be enough.

Beijing needs to take drastic actions to realize Xi's dream of making sure "the rice bowls of the Chinese people must be firmly in our own hands" does not remain a pie in the sky.