Tens of millions of poor Chinese farmers are migrating towards the country’s booming cities. But for all its problems, says Erle Ellis, China has managed to transform its ancient agricultural system, providing food and jobs for hundreds of millions more.
 | Erle C. Ellis, Department of Geography & Environmental Systems, University of Maryland, United States"China is definitely not an example where everything is going perfectly, but they are getting very good mileage out of modern agricultural technologies." (Photo: Erle Ellis) |
What is happening to Chinese farmland now that millions of farmers have left for the cities?
Interestingly, pressure on rural areas is both increasing and decreasing. There is less need to subsist and more need to profit, and this has led to marginal lands being abandoned for agriculture so that trees and other perennials actually cover more area now. The transition to fossil fuels, rather than traditional biofuels like straw or wood for cooking and heating, has allowed a lot of trees and shrubs to regrow. In the meantime, however, growing cities are eating up the croplands.
All of these trends push China towards more intensive agriculture on remaining agricultural lands, and thus more pollution. But as larger-scale professional farmers are becoming more common, they are in a position to use more scientific methods of modern chemical management that can be more efficient, and smaller numbers of professional farmers are more easily regulated than huge numbers of part-time farmers.
Some areas in China have been productive for thousands of years. Do you think that modern agriculture in China is as sustainable?
If you want to see whether a type of agriculture is sustainable, you have to do more than just look at the fields. You have to see how the farmer is doing, the infrastructure available and what kind of political and economic support they get.
What tends to happen when new technologies arrive in most nations is that farmers, who have the resources and education to capitalize on these, push out the small farmers. Unless they are able to go to the cities, those farmers tend to farm on marginal lands with poor soils and they will be degraded further.
 | Infographic (click on the image to enlarge)See how many people have been living on the Earth since 1700 (Graphic: Allianz) |
In China, it is different, because the government develops and extends most agricultural technologies and they tend to make these available and useful to pretty much everyone. You also can’t just sell your land, nor can anyone take it away unless you don’t farm it.
But what about all those ghastly stories about environmental degradation?
China is definitely not an example where everything is going perfectly, but they are getting very good mileage out of modern agricultural technologies. Even with such a big increase in population, they are using less agricultural land than before and getting more out of it. They often overapply fertilizers and other agrochemicals to accomplish this, which causes pollution and other problems, but crop yields are not going down overall.
Whether this is sustainable is another question. For the most productive areas of China, like the North China Plain, the big issue is getting enough water for irrigation. That is a really chilling situation. Essentially they are pumping the water out of the ground so fast that water levels go down every year. Once you get down below a certain level, the costs of energy for getting the water up on your field is more than the yield is worth.
How does China react to these problems?
The Chinese are thinking big and applying large-scale engineering solutions. They are in the process of diverting water from the Yangtze River up to the plain. This has ecological negatives, but it’s going to provide water to that system. You could say it is a disaster waiting to happen, but the Chinese try to ensure that it doesn’t happen. It’s really amazing; we are talking about irrigation water for hundreds of millions of farmers.
In the Yangtze plain itself, you have plenty of water- the problem there is urbanization and development. Some of the best rice plains in Asia are getting covered with concrete and asphalt. The government has long tried to stop this, but when the money is there, it is very hard to stop.
Do you think China and its agriculture could be an example for poor countries elsewhere?
Yes. Successful and sustained improvement of agricultural systems and agricultural society is a big challenge that was recognized and made a very high priority by China from the beginning of the current government. We often forget that China’s agricultural situation was dismal in most regions for centuries- foreigners called China "The Land of Famine” at the turn of the century. The new government realized early on that the first step to sustained development of the entire nation was successful subsistence agriculture coupled with rural education and rural infrastructure. That includes irrigation, fertilizers, and even light industry in townships and villages.
Once farm families have enough to eat, some income and some education, they have less incentive to migrate to big cities. China capitalized on this and opened the door to the city only after rural society was operating smoothly.
Without stabilizing rural society, you can expect an even greater mass migration of uneducated farmers to the cities. The result would make Lagos today look like heaven. Fortunately, this was avoided. China’s dramatic agricultural development is the foundation for its rise as a world economic power.
editor: Thilo Kunzemann
publishing date: August 13, 2008
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