New problems of food security in Northwest China: A sustainability perspective

Abstract

China's food security has met standards set by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. However, this development is based on excessive resource input and sacrificing the environment. There are few studies on how to evaluate food production systems with a sustainability framework. In order to guarantee the food security in Northwest China, and realize the sustainable development of agricultural production, this study was carried out. On the basis of comprehensive analysis of new problems faced, including water resources, cultivated land resources and ecological security, several indicators such as water resources development and utilization rate, cultivated land pressure index, cultivated land quality index, N and P emissions and emission intensity are proposed to comprehensively evaluate the sustainability of grain production in Northwest China and put forward countermeasures to realize regional sustainable development. The results show that the water resources are already at a high‐stress level as the development and utilization rate of water resources is 42.7% in 2015. Industrial and domestic water continues to squeeze agricultural water use (annual average reduction of 0.1%). The amount of per capita cultivated land in 2015 has decreased by 9.7% compared to 2000. The quality index of cultivated land is as low as 0.22. A series of ecological problems caused by agricultural production have intensified the ecological crisis in the Northwest, which in turn will further affect food security. Suggestions to address these issues include improving agricultural water use efficiency, strengthening the measures of arable land conservation, improving fertilizer utilization efficiency and reducing plastic‐film mulch residues.

Multiscale analysis of factors affecting food security in China, 1980–2017

“…Food security has long been an important topic in China, the world’s most populous country (Liu et al 2020a ; Tao et al 2008 ). Since 1987, China’s population has grown rapidly from 0.99 billion in 1980 to 1.39 billion in 2017 and with the relaxing of the two-child policy, the population may grow even faster (Liu et al 2020b ), bringing more serious challenges to food security. On this context, numerous studies have been done on China’s food security assessment from the point of food supply and demand (Qi et al 2015 ), production-consumption coordination (Wu et al 2016 ), food self-sufficiency (Niu et al 2021 ), and food policy (Huang and Yang 2017 ).…”

High-Quality Development of Chinese Agriculture under Factor Misallocation

“…The regression coefficient of cultivated land quality is significantly negative. Long-term unreasonable land use has led to the continuous decline in cultivated land quality, hindering the high-quality development of agriculture [ 69 , 70 ]. The coefficient of the disaster rate is significantly negative, indicating that the occurrence of natural disasters in agriculture is not conducive to the high-quality development of agriculture.…”

How to Balance Green and Grain in Marginal Mountainous Areas?

“…In China, grain self‐sufficiency has always been the most important evaluation criterion for grain supply for both policymakers and farmers (Ghose, 2014; Zhang & Cheng, 2016). We used the following formula to calculate the GSSI $$$\mathrm{G}\mathrm{S}\mathrm{S}\mathrm{I}=\frac{{\mathit{G}}_{\mathit{t}}}{\mathrm{P}\times \mathrm{k}}$$$ where G t is the total grain output of the region, k represents the per capita grain demand (i.e., 400 kg grain per capita, as proposed by FAO; Liu et al., 2020), and P represents the total population.…”

“…where G t is the total grain output of the region, k represents the per capita grain demand (i.e., 400 kg grain per capita, as proposed by FAO; Liu et al, 2020), and P represents the total population.…”