Sustainable Agriculture News

China's Sustainable Agricultural Development Challenges

Although China's food self-sufficiency is predicted to be acceptable in the next 50 years, agricultural sustainable development in China will still be challenged by water resource shortage, cultivated land decline, environmental pollution, and faults in the mechanisms for protection of cultivated land and inefficiencies in the management of land tenure rights.

(a) Agricultural water use

Agricultural water use for irrigation and animal husbandry plays an important role in agricultural production and is the main component in total water use in China. Thus there will be potential conflict between water demand and supply, and the competition for water will become more intense in the future. Undoubtedly, agricultural water use will continue to be less competitive because per unit water output value in agriculture is lower than that in industry.

In addition to scarce water resources in China, the efficiency of agricultural water use is relatively low. Water use efficiency can be improved in two ways:

Modify pipe systems to reduce unnecessary loss in transportation.
Technology and equipment for water saving need to be advanced.
(b) Cultivated land resources (i) Driving forces for cultivated land loss in the future

Land supply and demand and land-use mode are mainly decided by population, economy, society and natural conditions. The driving forces for China's cultivated land loss in the last decades included mainly its huge population with a trend of continuous growth, socio-economic development and environmental pressure.

The huge size of the population is the greatest challenge for China's sustainable development and is the prime reason for resource shortage and environmental degradation. Continuous population increase before 2030 will undoubtedly create increasing demand for cultivated land, grassland, forest and land for construction. The economic benefit derived from land use is the decisive parameter in the land resource distribution, and cultivated land is often considered to contribute a relatively low economic benefit. Thus, the increasing demand for cultivated land can only be met by exploitation of marginal land.

(ii) Protection mechanisms for cultivated land

Effective protection of cultivated land is essential to ensure food security and sustainable agricultural development in China. The current protection mechanisms in China have two major problems:

land-use programming, in which the authority of relevant administrations cannot be effectively countered and there is no joint land-use and urban construction programming and

protection of basic farmlands that focus only on the area of farmland in a protected area, but ignore the productivity of farmland resulting in declines in average productivity of cultivated land.

(c) Suggestions

To overcome the restrictions in China's sustainable agricultural development, it is suggested that the following actions should be taken:

Harmonization of different land-use patterns to meet demands of economic development and agricultural production,
Enhancement of ecological and environmental protection when supplementary land is brought into cultivation,
Design of a suitable land reclamation policy, and
Increase in capital investment for land consolidation and recultivation of abandoned land.

Furthermore, improving land use efficiency will also be effective in releasing the pressure on agricultural production due to the shortage of cultivated land.

(d) Tenure mechanism of agricultural land

In China, the basis of agricultural land tenure rights is the household responsibility system. Agricultural land is owned collectively, but use and management of the land are up to individual households. As the possessors of agricultural land, households can obtain direct and indirect benefit. Land provides a potential employment opportunity for peasants who have less chance to work in cities but, more importantly, access to agricultural land can help peasants avoid an uncertainty of food supply and income providing the necessary food guarantee and insurance.

(e) Use of fertilizers and pesticides

China's average fertilizer consumption on cultivated land is twofold of the maximum amount of fertilizer consumption in developed countries; This implies that fertilizers are being overused in China. On the other hand, the efficiency use of fertilizer is rather low. Over-consumption and low efficiency of fertilizer cause large amount of unabsorbed fertilizers remaining in soil leading to a series of environmental problems.

China has the largest pesticide consumption in the world. In common with the problems of fertilizer use, abuse and low efficiency of pesticide use are also common. Another problem with pesticide use is the high proportion of high-noxious pesticide in agriculture.

(f) Ecological agriculture in China

The combination of modern scientific, technological and traditional agriculture in China presents a new opportunity, eco-agriculture. This requires the application of ecological theory and methods of systems science. More than one-sixth of counties throughout China have been selected to carry out an eco-agricultural county project. During the process of China's eco-agricultural development during previous decades, primary theory, technology and model agricultural methods characteristic for China have been developed. The introduction of eco-agriculture has greatly contributed to sustainable agricultural development. As an effective tool and general approach to sustainable agricultural development, eco-agriculture has been widely recognized in China.

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610116/