Who Will Feed China?: Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet (Worldwatch Environmental Alert) - Softcover

Brown, Lester R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 039331409X ISBN 13: 9780393314090

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995

Synopsis

In an integrated world economy, China’s rising food prices will become the world’s rising food prices. China’s land scarcity will become everyone’s land scarcity. And water scarcity in China will affect the entire world. China’s dependence on massive imports, like the collapse of the world’s fisheries, will be a wake-up call that we are colliding with the earth’s capacity to feed us. It could well lead us to redefine national security away from military preparedness and toward maintaining adequate food supplies.

To feed its 1.2 billion people, China may soon have to import so much grain that this action could trigger unprecedented rises in world food prices. In Who Will Feed China: Wake-up Call for a Small Planet, Lester Brown shows that even as water becomes more scarce in a land where 80 percent of the grain crop is irrigated, as per-acre yield gains are erased by the loss of cropland to industrialization, and as food production stagnates, China still increases its population by the equivalent of a new Beijing each year. When Japan, a nation of just 125 million, began to import food, world grain markets rejoiced. But when China, a market ten times bigger, starts importing, there may not be enough grain in the world to meet that need - and food prices will rise steeply for everyone. Analysts foresaw that the recent four-year doubling of income for China's 1.2 billion consumers would increase food demand, especially for meat, eggs, and beer. But these analysts assumed that food production would rise to meet those demands. Brown shows that cropland losses are heavy in countries that are densely populated before industrialization, and that these countries quickly become net grain importers. We can see that process now in newspaper accounts from China as the government struggles with this problem.

About this title

About the Author

Lester R. Brown is the founder of the Earth Policy and Worldwatch Institutes. He has been honored with numerous prizes, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the United Nations Environment Prize, and twenty-five honorary degrees. He lives in Washington, D.C.

From the Back Cover

To feed its 1.2 billion people, China may soon have to import so much grain that this action could trigger unprecedented rises in world food prices. In Who Will Feed China: Wake-up Call for a Small Planet, Lester Brown shows that even as water becomes more scarce in a land where 80 percent of the grain crop is irrigated, as per-acre yield gains are erased by the loss of cropland to industrialization, and as food production stagnates, China still increases its population by the equivalent of a new Beijing each year. When Japan, a nation of just 125 million, began to import food, world grain markets rejoiced. But when China, a market ten times bigger, starts importing, there may not be enough grain in the world to meet that need - and food prices will rise steeply for everyone. Analysts foresaw that the recent four-year doubling of income for China's 1.2 billion consumers would increase food demand, especially for meat, eggs, and beer. But these analysts assumed that food production would rise to meet those demands.

Reviews

Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute and recipient of numerous environmental awards, predicts that China's current breakneck industrialization will lead to massive world grain shortages early in the next century. He states that political leaders everywhere need to recognize that "the world is now on a demographic and economic path that is environmentally unsustainable." Using Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan as the only examples of countries that were densely populated when they embarked on rapid industrialization, similar to China's present situation, Brown points out that these countries developed in such a way that they were compelled to import the majority of the grain their populations consumed. He cites many reasons for the dependence on foreign grain, including growing land scarcity, migration to the city from farms, overpopulation, water scarcity, and unstable prices on the world market. Brown argues persuasively that the major world challenge in the future is not military aggression but, rather, food scarcity. No other book develops this theme in as straightforward a fashion. Highly recommended.?Peggy Spitzer Christoff, Oak Park, Ill.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 039331409X
• ISBN 13: 9780393314090
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 168