China lost five per cent of its farmland in the last six years and about a third of what remains is suffering degradation, such as erosion, says a new report from Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a columnist at the Foreign Policypublication and a fellow for international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The decline in farmland is spelled out in a government document released Feb.13.
The document, which carries enormous weight, sets forth two critical priorities: safeguarding national food security and protecting farmland, Liu wrote.
While previous No.1 documents touched on these issues between 2004 and 2012, it was not until 2013, when Xi Jinping assumed leadership, that the annual No. 1 document established a consistent and resolute focus on food security and farmland preservation.
The most recent land use survey showed that China’s total arable land decreased from 334 million acres in 2013 to 316 million acres in 2019, a loss of more than 5 percent in just six years.
“Shockingly, more than one-third of China’s remaining arable land (660 million mu, a traditional unit of land measurement in China and equal to roughly 109 million acres) suffers from problems of degradation, acidification, and salinization,” she said.
The land has been eroding faster in recent years. The annual net decrease of arable land has risen from about 6 million mu (about 988,421 acres) from 1957 to 1996 to more than 11 million mu (about 1.8 million acres) from 2009 to 2019.
She concluded, “If China’s economic recovery and its continued growth are fueled by land sales and its property market, Xi’s prioritization of food security means Chinese entities will have to embark on more aggressive overseas land purchases.
