Chinese Food Security and Climate Change: Agriculture Futures

Liming Ye,Daniel Mason-D’Croz,Gerald C Nelson,Peng Yang,Huajun Tang,Wenbin Wu,Amanda Palazzo

doi:10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2014-1

Abstract

Abstract Climate change is now affecting agriculture and food production in every country of the world. Here the authors present the IMPACT model results on yield, production, and net trade of major crops in China, and on daily calorie availability as an overall indicator of food security under climate change scenarios and socio-economic pathways in 2050. The obtained results show a relatively optimistic outlook on yield, production and trade toward 2050. The outcomes of calorie availability suggest that China will be able to maintain a level of at least 3,000 kilocalories per day through 2010 to 2050. Overall, Chinese agriculture is relatively resilient to climate change. It is unlikely that Chinese food security by 2050 will be compromised in the context of climate change. The major challenge to food security, however, will rise from increasing demand coupled with regional disparities in adaptive capacity to climate change.

Highlights

The world faces multiple challenges to food security ranging from continuous population growth and rapid diet transition to decreasing cropland area and insufficient production practices (Beddington et al, 2012)
The obtained results for wheat, maize, and rice – under both irrigated and rainfed farming – were mapped for qualitative evaluation of climate change impact on crop yield in 2050 relative to yield under current climate in 2000 (Figure and Figure for maize; Figure S5 through Figure S8 for wheat and rice)
The analysis of the IMPACT model results presented in this paper suggests that Chinese agriculture is relatively resilient to climate change compared to other parts of the world

Summary

Introduction

The world faces multiple challenges to food security ranging from continuous population growth and rapid diet transition to decreasing cropland area and insufficient production practices (Beddington et al, 2012). Food production per capita has remained stable during the twentieth century, largely due to technological advances. The food system faces additional pressure as the dominant diet pattern is shifting towards higher consumption of calories, fats and animal products. As the dominant source of the human food supply, the per capita availability of world cropland has been decreasing at a rate of 0.8% per year during the twentieth century (Ramankutty et al, 2008) and will continue to decrease at the foreseeable future. The demand for cereals will probably grow by 50% until 2030 and even higher production will have to be achieved through agricultural intensification for a world of 9 billion people in 2050 (Tilman et al, 2002; Schmidhuber and Tubiello, 2007)

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Conclusion