Provincial food security in China: a quantitative risk assessment based on local food supply and demand trends

Abstract

Understanding trends in food supply and demand are of great importance to the maintenance of China’s food security. We identified natural disasters (floods, drought, hail and frost), resource constraints, input constraints and growth of food demand as sources of risk, which could cause food insecurity. We therefore conducted an integrated three-step risk assessment, based on the Cobb-Douglas production function and scenario analysis method. The results predict that, irrespective of the total food demand and scenario, China could guarantee more than 90 % food self-sufficiency as long as the identified natural disasters occurred at no more than the historical average for the period 1986–2011. However, in a pessimistic scenario, consisting of the simultaneous occurrence of the worst natural disasters over this period, the consequent annual grain shortfall would put most provinces and cities into the medium or high risk range for food security in both 2015 and 2020. In such a scenario, the current grain stock is only sufficient to buffer China’s grain supplies for one year. In most scenarios, 10 of the 13 major grain producing provinces will have the ability to maintain their current food self-sufficiency rates over the next few years, but the food self-sufficiency rates of the more developed provinces and the largest cities will continue to decline, mainly because of the reduction in cultivated land and accelerating urbanization.