Agriculture and Food security in China.

On tuesday, we had a disscussion about the garden tour last week at the beginning of the class. Actually I have never grown anything before. Because I was born and grow up in a big city of China, the majority of opportunities I had for knowing how vegetables grow happen during the time I took train to travel when I was very young. My mom told me what are corn, wheat, sorghum, millet, rice, eggplant, cabbage and so forth. Thanks to our neighbor when we were living in bungalow 20 years ago, I got another way to know the growth of vegetables. She cut out a garden plot which was only about 4 or 5 square meters in the area; cultivated tomatos, chilies, sunflowers, eggplants, and daylilies. but what I can see in China now are numerous lagescale greenhouses surrounding busy cities.

Nowadays in China, the overwhelming majority of people live in buildings and do not have time nor place to gardening themselves. And as is known to all, China is a country with a large population but less arable land, only 7%of the world's arable land but have to feed 1/5 of the world's population. Since 1978, Chinese government issued the household contract responsibility system; cancelled the state market monopoly of agricultural products, and of price controls over most of agricultural and ancillary products; allowed farmers to develop diversified business and set up township enterprises. Besides policy, the other contribution to the success of conquering hunger in China is the development of science and agriculture. The research achievements in hybrid rice is worth mentioning. Yuan Longping, internationally regarded as the "father of hybrid rice", rewrote the history of rice cultivation in China in the second half of the 20th century.

Hybrid rice is the first technology that is exported to the U.S. in 1970s. By using this technology, output of rice was tripled. More than 40 countries in the world are using this technology today. We know that food security concern two aspects: enough foods and nutrious foods. Thanks to hybrid rice, enough foods is guaranteed. Another problem is how to deal with nutrition prolems. Causations for malnutrition in China are highly related to residing location and income level. In western poor provinces and rural areas, micronutrient deficiency is common; in urban areas, negative effects from junk food is the main reason for food insecurity. Chinese people never stop researching and improving on agriculture. Agricultural biotechnology is a way of reducing micronutrients deficiencies. Levels of certain micronutrients are higher in biofortified crops. China has shown greater speed in the development and commercial introduction of transgenic plant varieties, though, as of 2001, it had been unwilling to allow the sale of transgenic plant foods directly to consumers. The Chinese have made efforts to create crops with resistance to disease, drought, and insect pests. Such improvements could enable China to expand its supply of arable land. China has officially moved from being an international aid recipient (1980-2005, April), and become a donor nation, now that it no longer requires assistance from the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP). China was the third largest food donor in 2005, accounted for more than half of the overall increase in food donations in 2005. The successful story of China proved the words of Chairman Deng-"science and technology is the first productivity". That is to say, science and technology are the essential things need to be developed firstly to guarantee food security. I don't know if there are also these kinds of greenhouse for veggetables. I think there should be, but not usual compare to China. In China, the prices of vegetables are about only 1/10 of those of meats for the same weight. But it is not the same satuation in the U.S. That is to say, Chinese people are more freely to eat vegetables so that more vitamins and minerals could be intaken. In the U.S., people who do not have enough money to spend on foods always choose meats rather than veggetables, because meats, in the same weight, have much higher calories and fat than veggetables. This will absolutely cause obesity and other health problems related to food insecurity. My point is that coordinating the agriculture market, reducing the price of vegetables, producing more veggetables, seem to be most important, basic and significant.

For the second section of class on tuseday, we had a lecture from Dr.Holben about the measurement of food insecurity. 18-item core module is a survey-based classical method to measure food insecurity in the U.S. since 1995. It is conducted by CDC of the U.S. There are 18 questions in the survey. This is really a significant way to control and supervise the nutrtion status of American people. The responses to this 18-item food security survey module were used to classify households into 3 categories of food security status:
1. Food secure: households that show no or minimal evidence of food insecurity..
2. Food insecure without hunger: food insecurity is evident in the household concerns and in adjustments to household food management including reduced-quality diets. Little or no reduction in the household members’ food intake was reported.

3. Food insecure with hunger: the food intake for adults and children in the household has been reduced to the extent that they have repeatedly experienced the physical sensations of hunger.

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On the same day, I also noticed that the CFI placed an announcement in the fourth floor of baker center. Nothing could be more important than foods to human.