Cover Story: Food insecurity

朝日新聞的報道。

中國的糧食需求和價格上升，已對日本的糧食供應帶來威脅。當中國要為應付國內不斷增加的需求而頭痛時，日本食平米的日子愈來愈少了。不過最荒謬的，還是日本農產品制度，對農業的價格保障，令農地不能充分利用。

Cover Story: Food insecurity
01/14/2008
BY YOSHINOBU MOTEGI THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
China's voracious appetite for imported grain threatens to trigger a food crisis of international proportions, experts say.
Just as happened in the early 1970s, when the Soviet Union suddenly accelerated its imports after a sharp fall in domestic grain production, growing demand in China could have global implications, they warn.
Yuki Takagi, who heads the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Finance Corp., was in charge of feed grain at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries at the time.
Looking back on the crisis, he said: "Prices for livestock feed doubled."
According to Takagi, grain stockpiles around the world have dropped to those same levels of more than 30 years ago.
Given the international flow of hot speculative money, he warned that "once China runs short of grain, we may be seeing an even steeper price hike in the future."
If that happens, Japan will be in trouble.
According to farm ministry figures from last August, Japan produced 9.6 million tons of grain in 2007 for a self-sufficiency rate of 27 percent.
For corn, Japan is almost totally dependent on imports. According to the agriculture ministry, Japan imported 16.8 million tons of corn in 2006.
Japan's domestic livestock industry traditionally has relied on cheap imported feed. But those days may be numbered, experts say.
Resource-poor Japan--and much of the rest of the world--may be at a crossroads before too long. Much depends on whether China can keep its ever-surging demand for grain in check.
Ruan Wei, a senior researcher at think tank Norinchukin Research Institute Co., said China may end up becoming a corn importer by around 2010.
In addition to growing demand for corn to produce bioethanol and starches, China's population is expected to grow another 100 million by 2030, further fueling demand for food and commodities.
But there is little likelihood of cultivating new croplands. The prospect of drought brought on by the effects of global warming is another factor.
"It is hard to imagine there will be huge growth in corn production," Ruan said.
The United States produces 40 percent of the world's corn. With the new focus on corn as an ingredient in alternative bioethanol fuel, the United States is cutting back on its corn exports in a big way.
China is the world's No. 2 producer of corn, growing about 20 percent. If it becomes an importer, there is no guarantee that it will be able to find suppliers to meet its needs.
Specialists say China likely will remain self-sufficient in rice and wheat for the time being. China turned an importer of soybeans in 1995. Since then, self-sufficiency rate for soybeans dropped sharply, hitting 34 percent in 2006. China, with a billion-plus people to feed, imported 43 percent of the world's total soy export volume that year.
Vast tracts of tropical rain forest and orchards in South America are now vanishing and being quickly transformed into soybean fields to feed China.
China's becoming a major grain importer in 1995 led to price hikes and drew international criticism. At the November 1996 World Food Summit, China was forced to pledge a commitment to maintaining 95 percent self-sufficiency in grain as a national food security goal.
Last spring, the price of pork--a crucial ingredient in the Chinese diet--soared. The rising cost of feed was deemed to be the cause.
In May last year, the government said it will halt construction of new bioethanol processing plants and expansion projects.
Other projects are also affected.
A massive forestation program that aimed to convert slope farmland and desert areas into forests and grassland, in response to flooding of the Yangtze river in 1998, was also halted in 2007.
In 2006, its total cropland area was dropping, looming close to the benchmark 120 million hectares considered necessary to sustain food security in China.
Thus, China must continue to walk a fine line to keep its international pledge, weighing demands for food, flood control and fuel.
A 46-year-old woman who runs a feed store in Meng La, Yunnan province, China, only 60 kilometers from the Laotian border said: "Corn from Laos is much cheaper, so it is gone in a flash."
Domestic corn, mainly used as feed, has become scarce and now costs 27 yen a kilogram. That price is 30 percent higher compared to prices of 2006.
Until a few years ago, there was a surplus of domestic corn. China enjoyed a bumper harvest from 1996 through 2000. More than 100 million tons were kept in storage, exceeding annual consumption volume.
Then China began using excess corn for bioethanol production in 2002. The balance tipped when crude oil prices spiked and demand for bioethanol--and corn--exploded.
Corn in storage shrunk to 25 percent compared to seven years previously. China began looking elsewhere to meet its needs.
Louang Namtha province in northern Laos lies just across the border from China. The 68-year-old president of a major trading company lamented: "I can't find any corn. My business is suffering."
Corn is being gobbled up by private traders who cross over from China in hordes. Customs authorities don't bother to stop single trucks with a load full of corn.
"Chinese trading companies are using at least a few hundred private operators so that they can save on taxes," the company president said testily.
A representative from a trading house based in Anhui province traveled 1,500 kilometers this winter to visit a brokerage storage plant in Jilin province, which is China's foremost corn production area.
An official at the storage company was unfazed: "(The representative) came all the way because Anhui province has bioethanol production plants but not much corn."
In nearby Chenjia village, farmers had completed harvesting and were whiling away their time playing mah-jongg and watching television, waiting for buyers to show up.
In the past, under China's state-planned economy system, the farmers' work was considered done once they had hauled their produce to state-run storage houses. Now farmers get to decide the best time to sell.
Chen Xinsheng, 62, had 30 tons of corn drying. Chen said: "Traders who come early offer low prices. Only those in need will try and sell (their corn.)"
Village chief, Chen Xinfu, 59, explained: "Actually, all of the villagers are like family. We keep a pact to sell only at a certain set price or higher. No one takes merchants who try to bargain seriously."
So where does Japan stand, with its 27-percent grain self-sufficiency?
Japan actually has more than 380,000 hectares of farmland nationwide that has been left fallow in efforts to control overproduction of rice. The area is 1.8 times the size of Tokyo.
Takagi at the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Finance Corp. said, "We really need to reassess the subsidy system so that farmers can use their farmland to produce rice that can be used as a cheap (livestock) feed source, instead of growing rice intended as a principal foodstuff."(IHT/Asahi: January 14,2008)