Who will feed China?
Subtitle: wake-up call for a small planet
By: Lester R. Brown.
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: The worldwatch environmental alert series
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 163
Subjects: Food supply -- China.; Food supply.; Agriculture and state -- China.
Description: To feed its 1.2 billion people, China may soon have to import so much grain that this action could trigger unprecedented rises in world food prices.

In Who Will Feed China: Wake-up Call for a Small Planet, Lester Brown shows that even as water becomes more scarce in a land where 80 percent of the grain crop is irrigated, as per-acre yield gains are erased by the loss of cropland to industrialization, and as food production stagnates, China still increases its population by the equivalent of a new Beijing each year.

When Japan, a nation of just 125 million, began to import food, world grain markets rejoiced. But when China, a market ten times bigger, starts importing, there may not be enough grain in the world to meet that need - and food prices will rise steeply for everyone. Analysts foresaw that the recent four-year doubling of income for China's 1.2 billion consumers would increase food demand, especially for meat, eggs, and beer. But these analysts assumed that food production would rise to meet those demands.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [143]-157) and index.