Food versus Feed and the Dynamics of the World Food Situation: Discussion

Abstract

I do not have major conceptual or methodological differences with any of the papers. What is intended here is to supplement Dr. Mellor's paper, since his analysis excluded the People's Republic of China (PRC), and to elaborate on Dr. Tang's paper. Basically, China's agricultural development faces the same problems the other developing countries have encountered, namely, a large population to feed, backward agricultural technology, large rural sector, and a poor natural endownment. In addition, China suffers from the consequences of thirty years of isolation and the aftereffects of past dogmatic ideology. Since 1976, China's current leadership has embarked on a pragmatic course of modernization of the economy. Therefore, the Chinese agricultural development should be looked at in two distinct periods: 1949-76 and 1977 to date. Some of the notable agricultural policies in force today include: (a) putting the order of economic priority as agriculture, light industry, and heavy industry, with emphasis also on energy and transportation sectors; (b) raising standards of living in rural and urban areas by raising personal income, by producing more consumer goods and less capital goods, and by subsidizing the gap between the recently raised procurement prices and the retail prices of agricultural products; (c) decentralizing more production and managerial decision making down to basic production units instead of relying on orders from the central government; (d) implementing, on a large scale, a material incentive production system rather than relying on ideology as in the past; (e) allowing the expansion of private sector by enlarging the size of private plots and opening rural free markets-as a result, the rural income derived from this activity has increased from 25% of total in 1979 to possibly as high as 40% currently; (f) being willing to import large amounts of farm goods, especially grains and cotton, in order to satisfy rising demand; (g) emphasizing science, technology, ecoomics, and management; and (h) strictly enforcing population control. Because of these policies much progress was made in agriculture between 1977 and 1980. Table 1 presents a rough comparison. In addition, population growth rate was reduced to about 1.1% in 1980. Per capita inome for a commune member from collective distribution, which had increased from 43 yuan in 1956 to 63 yuan in 1976, rise to 85 yuan in 1980, a similar increase in just four