Who Will Feed China?

Lester Brown is an environmental analyst, and founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and the Earth Policy Institute.  His grand plan was to observe global trends, and produce objective information.  Brown’s many books and reports have provided rational advice for the world’s irrational policymakers.  He has not sold his soul to corporate interests.

In 1994, Brown wrote an essay, Who Will Feed China?  It triggered an explosive response.  Chinese leaders angrily denounced him.  But behind the scenes, they realized that their nation was vulnerable, because they had not perceived the big picture clearly.  Brown expanded his essay into a book with the same title, published in 1995.  It became a classic.  Reading it 20 years later is eerie, because many of his warnings now sound like the daily news.

Before they industrialized, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan were already densely populated.  Then, the growth of industry gobbled up a lot of cropland, which reduced food production, and forced all three to become dependent on imported grain.  In 1994, Japan imported 72 percent of its grain, South Korea 66 percent, and Taiwan 76 percent.

Brown saw that China was on a similar trajectory.  Cropland was limited, and it was rapidly being lost to sprawl, industry, and highways.  They were likely to lose half of their cropland by 2030.  They were also likely to add another 500 million people by 2030.  As incomes rose, people were eager to enjoy a richer diet, including more meat and beer.  This required even more cropland per person.

Freshwater for agriculture was also limited, and much of it was being diverted to growing cities and factories.  About 300 cities were already short of water.  China’s capitol, Beijing, was among 100 cities with severe water shortages.  Demand for water was sure to rise.  Only a few Chinese had indoor plumbing, and everyone wanted it.

Many farmers were forced to drill wells and pump irrigation water from aquifers, often at rates in excess of natural recharge — water mining.  As enormous amounts of water were removed underground, subsidence occurs.  The ground surface sinks, filling the void below, making it impossible for the aquifer to recharge in the future.  In northern China, subsidence affects a region the size of Hungary.  Irrigated fields produce the most food, but water mining will eventually force a reduction in irrigation.  Some regions may be forced to stop growing rice, a water-guzzling crop, and replace it with less productive millet or sorghum.

Grain productivity (yield per hectare) annually grew an average of 7.1 percent between 1977 and 1984.  The annual increase was less than 2 percent between 1984 and 1990, and just 0.7 percent between 1990 and 1994.  There were great hopes for biotechnology, but 20 years of efforts led to no significant increase in grain yields.  Meanwhile, the Yellow River moved 1.6 billion tons of topsoil to the ocean every year.

Now, assemble the pieces.  Population was likely to grow from 1.2 billion in 1995 to 1.66 billion in 2045.  Per capita grain consumption was growing, likely to increase 33 percent by 2030.  Cropland area was likely to decrease 50 percent by 2030.  Water for irrigation was limited, and certain to diminish.  Annual grain harvests may have been close to, or beyond, their historic peak.  The effects of climate change cannot be predicted, but might be severe.  In 1995, the notion of Peak Oil had not yet spread beyond the lunatic fringe, and Brown didn’t mention it, but at some point, it will make modern agriculture impossible.

Demand for grain was rising at a rate that would sharply exceed China’s harvests.  If their economy remained strong, they would have the money to import food.  But, would the food they need be available on the world market?  Following a century of catastrophic population growth, many nations were dependent on imported food.

As world population continued to grow, the ability to further increase food production was wheezing.  World grain stocks fell from 465 million tons in 1987, to 298 million tons in 1994.  At some point, surging demand for grain would exceed the surpluses of the exporters.  This would drive up the price of food.

Brown selected ten large developing nations where population growth remained extreme, and projected how much food they would need to import by 2030.  “By 2030, these countries — assuming no improvement in diet — will need to import 190 million tons of grain.  This is six times the amount they import today and nearly equal to total world grain exports in 1994.”

We were moving into an era of food instability.  “For the first time, an environmental event — the collision of expanding human demand with some of the earth’s natural limits — will have an economic impact that affects the entire world.”  Annual economic growth for the world was falling.  The global economy grew 5.2 percent in the ’60s, 3.4 percent in the ’70s, 2.9 percent in the ’80s, and 1.4 percent in 1990-94.  Slower growth, plus rising food prices, plus falling incomes, sets the stage for trouble.  “It could lead to political unrest and a swelling flow of hungry migrants across national borders.”

Agriculture was running out of steam.  The wizards of industrial civilization insisted that perpetual growth was possible, because our miraculous technology could overcome all challenges.  They were wrong.  Brown concludes, “The bottom line is that achieving a humane balance between food and people is now more in the hands of family planners than farmers.”  When Brown wrote, there were 5.6 billion of us.  Irrational policymakers disregarded the urgent need for family planning.  And so, today, at 7.2 billion, the world is a far more unstable place, with no light at the end of the tunnel.

Twenty years before Brown’s book, China realized that population growth was a problem.  They were adding 13 million every year, and emigration was not a real option.  Their one-child policy was launched in 1979, and the transition was bumpy.  The birthrate fell from 2.7 percent in 1970 to 1.1 percent in 1994.  It succeeded in preventing much misery, but it didn’t stop growth.  Brown praised them for actually taking action, forcing the present generation to sacrifice for the benefit of future generations — a concept unimaginable to Americans.

Brown, Lester R., Who Will Feed China?, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1995.

Here are recent follow-up reports from the Earth Policy Institute:

Can the World Feed China?  Lester R. Brown, February 25, 2014

Peak Water: What Happens When the Wells Go Dry?  Lester R. Brown, July 09, 2013

Global Grain Stocks Drop Dangerously Low as 2012 Consumption Exceeded Production , Janet Larsen, January 17, 2013

Late Victorian Holocausts

In the years 1876-1879 and 1896-1902 between 12.2 and 29.3 million died of famine in India.  In the years 1876-1879 and 1896-1900 between 19.5 and 30 million died of famine in China.  In the same period, an estimated 2 million died in Brazil.  Famine hit these three nations the hardest, but many other nations were also affected.  In the US, churches organized to send relief to hungry farmers in the Dakotas and western Kansas.

Mike Davis wrote about these famines in his book Late Victorian Holocausts.  The famines occurred in regions slammed by severe drought.  The droughts have been linked to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a major factor in global weather patterns. 

Droughts have been common throughout history, and agricultural societies have commonly prepared for them by creating emergency reserves of stored grain.  Because of political shifts in many regions, these safety nets were in poor condition during the late Victorian droughts.  In the wake of the Industrial Revolution came a new mode of economic thinking that frowned on setting aside significant wealth for insurance against disaster.  It was more profitable to sell the grain today, pocket the cash, and worry about tomorrow’s problems tomorrow.  Peasants were expendable.

The Qing dynasty in China believed that subsistence was a human right, and it had relief management systems in place to reduce the toll of famines during drought years or floods.  By the late Victorian era, conflicts with colonial powers had drained the wealth of the Qing government, so it was incapable of effectively responding to the catastrophic droughts.

Prior to the British colonization of India, the Moguls had a similar system for responding to famine.  The British, on the other hand, were cruel masters (as they had been during the 1845 famine in Ireland).  Food was widely available, but few could afford the inflated prices.  While millions were starving, they exported Indian wheat.  They outlawed donations of private relief.  They forbid the Pariahs from foraging for forest foods, leading to 155,000 deaths.  They created relief camps where the starving received inadequate rations, and 94 percent died.  Very civilized chaps, eh?

The hungry hordes in Brazil were the victims of their own corrupt government, which had disposed of grain reserves.  Brazil was not a colony of Britain, but English investors and creditors played a powerful role in the economy, turning Brazil into an “informal colony” that was kept permanently in debt.

Davis argued that the millions of deaths were largely a deliberate “holocaust” rather than a spell of bad luck, because political actions were a primary factor behind the high mortality rates.  He also argued that this holocaust played a role in the creation of the Third World.  In the eighteenth century, Europe did not have the highest standard of living.  The biggest manufacturing districts were in India and China.  Their workers ate better, had lower unemployment, and often earned more than workers in Europe.  Literacy rates were higher, including women.

One of Davis’s primary objectives was to spank capitalism, colonialism, and the hideous overseers of the British Empire.  There has been lively discussion in the reader feedback at Amazon, and a number of critics have questioned the way in which Davis assigned blame for the massive famines.  For me, the book had important messages:  (1) Droughts happen.  (2) Agricultural societies are highly vulnerable to droughts.  (3) Famines commonly follow droughts.  (4) Famines can be horrific. 

When rains ended an Indian drought in 1878, the mosquito population exploded, and hundreds of thousands of malnourished survivors died of malaria.  Meanwhile, locusts gobbled up the growing young plants.  Hungry peasants murdered many creditors who threatened foreclosure.  Then came gangs of armed tax collectors.  Hungry wild animals became very aggressive, dragging away the weak, screaming.  In the Madras Deccan, “the only well-fed part of the local population were the pariah dogs, ‘fat as sheep,’ that feasted on the bodies of dead children.”

In China, the flesh of the starved was sold at markets for four cents a pound.  People sold their children to buy food.  Husbands ate their wives.  Parents ate their children.  Children ate their parents.  Thousands of thieves were executed.  At refugee camps, many perished from disease.  If too many refugees accumulated, they were simply massacred.  In some regions, relief took more than a year to arrive.

Davis’s vivid and extensive descriptions of famine times remind an increasingly obese society that we are living in a temporary and abnormal bubble of cheap and abundant calories.  Importantly, he puts a human face on the consequences of climate change, a subject usually presented in purely abstract form: parts per million, degrees Celsius, and colorful computer-generated charts, graphs, and maps.

Near the end of the book, Davis gives us a big, fat, juicy discussion on the history of agriculture and ecological catastrophe in China.  People who remain in denial about the inherent destructiveness of agriculture typically point to China as a glowing example of 4,000 years of happy sustainable low-impact organic farming.  Wrong, wrong, wrong!  This chapter provides a powerful cure for those who suffer from such embarrassing naughty fantasies.

The late Victorian droughts happened at a time when the world population was less than 1.4 billion.  Today, it’s over 7 billion, and growing by 70 million per year.  Cropland area per capita is shrinking, and soil health is diminishing.  Energy prices are rising, and water usage for irrigation is foolishly unsustainable.  We’re getting close to Peak Food.  World grain production per capita peaked in 1984, at 342 kilograms per person.  World grain stocks (stored grain) peaked in 1986, and have been declining since then.

On 24 July 2012, the venerable Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute published a warning in The Guardian.  “The world is in serious trouble on the food front.”  World grain stocks are currently “dangerously low.”  “Time is running out.  The world may be much closer to an unmanageable food shortage — replete with soaring food prices, spreading food unrest, and ultimately political instability — than most people realize.” 

For me, the main message of this book was a powerful warning about the huge risks of agriculture, and its insanely destructive companion, overpopulation.  The famines discussed in this book were not a freak event in history.  Famine has been a common, normal, periodic occurrence in virtually all agricultural societies, from the Cradle of Civilization to today. 

As the collapse of industrial civilization proceeds and life slows down, opportunities to live more in balance with nature will emerge.  Clever societies will carefully limit population size, and phase out their dependence on farming.  Un-clever societies will continue to breed like there’s no tomorrow, beat their ecosystems to death, and hippity-hop down the Dinosaur Trail.

Davis, Mike, Late Victorian Holocausts, Verso, New York, 2001.