A Changing Global Food Market: Implications for China

Abstract

Questions about the ability of the world to feed its growing human population become very topical from time to time. This usually happens following a sharp run-up in prices of major foodstuffs, principally grains, as happened after the sharp price increase in 1973–74. In recent years there has been a drumbeat of concern raised by those with mainly environmental worries about depletion and degradation of soils and water supplies. In recent years these anxieties have been reinforced by the publication of Lester Brown’s gloomy forecast of the consequences of food consumption and production in China and by the sharp increase in grain prices in the year to June 1996.