How China can be a model of food sustainability for the developing world

Food and water – we cannot do without them, but too often these resources are squandered and lost. The global population currently stands at about 7.3 billion, which the UN predicts will grow to about 11.2 billion by 2100 and then fall to a fairly constant level of 10 billion. As the world has become richer, families have opted for fewer children; most of the globe now has a replacement rate of less than two except for countries in sub-Saharan Africa and across much of Asia: future growth will be in these regions. China, in Asia, has good links to many nations in Africa and can exert great influence.

In its recent five-year plans, Beijing has focused on infrastructure expansion while maintaining growth. As a consequence, it has garnered a large sovereign wealth fund that may be spent on its future social aims – to support the elderly and enhance the learning potential of its children (it has just announced the scrapping of its one-child family policy).

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It is approaching these aims in several ways; one has been to vastly increase its transport and telecoms infrastructure, another is by constructing many new towns to entice rural migrants away from the now overcrowded coastal cities that were originally responsible for China’s economic boom. The inland cities and towns are taking up this clarion call.

Another infrastructure change, a massive experiment, concerns the diversion of the southern Yangtze River water to the arid industrialised northern towns. The South-North Transfer should divert 45 billion cubic metres of water annually through a network of canals and tunnels – and water has just begun to flow north along its eastern phase. Of course, many people have been displaced along its route, and they have valid woes, but the greater good will be felt in the north where many poor people live, as well as the wealthy. Those who have been displaced ought to be relocated to new towns along the route benefiting from the infrastructure that aims to develop new local wealth.

The 13th five-year plan aims to lift China’s remaining 70 million poor above the US$2 per day threshold. Beijing managed that task partially though its previous five-year plan by spectacularly meeting the UN Millennium Goals and I believe that its bedrock of infrastructure and momentum for change will allow it to meet the new goals.