Rethinking Global Land Use in an Urban Era

5. Land-Use Competition between Food Production and Urban Expansion in China

5 Land-Use Competition between Food Production and Urban Expansion in China Xiangzheng Deng, Yingzhi Lin, and Karen C. Seto Abstract Land-use competition for urbanization and food production has created a significant challenge in China for which there is no quick solution. Maintaining cultivated land is essential to food security, while the trend of urban expansion along with socioeconomic development is irreversible.This chapter analyzes the total effects of urbanization on cultivated land and food production. The mode of urbanization is crucially important, as cultivated land area and food production can be promoted under certain conditions. The problem of food security is not rooted in the occupation of land by urbanization and will not be solved by suppressing urbanization. Instead, developing a rational method of urbanization offers the most effective solution. Introduction: Context of Land-Use Competition in China For over thirty years, China has experienced a period of rapid economic growth and is gradually transitioning to a stage of sustained, stable, and integrated economic and social development. In this stage, land use for food production and urbanization often conflicts with each other, causing new phenomena to occur, such as massive production factor flow and reiterative land-use change (Deng et al. 2006). Systematic and integrated research is needed to explain these new phenomena and to provide points of reference for decision makers. Urbanization and cultivated land protection are two important and interrelated issues in China, and coordinating their relationship constitutes the key problem. It is evident that urban expansion has led to reductions in the area of cultivated land in China. In recent years, more than 70% of the increase in urban land area took place in what was previously cultivated land (Hao et al. 2011). Although the central government has tried to halt the loss of cultivated 72 X. Deng, Y. Lin, and K. C. Seto land, the expansion of urban areas and cultivated land protection are likely to be in conflict for the foreseeable future. Limited Cultivated Land Cultivated land protection is a key issue of sustainable socioeconomic development in China. “Rationally utilizing and steadily protecting each inch of farmland ” is a basic national policy. Until now, the world’s strictest cultivated landprotection systems have been implemented in China. These include the basic farmland-protection system, a total dynamic balance of cultivated land, and a land-use regulation system (Li et al. 2009; He et al. 2011). However, a significant gap exists between policies and measures and their actual implementation. The total area of cultivated land in China accounts for 9.5% of the world total, ranking the fourth largest after the United States, India, and Russia. However, when one considers its huge population, China has inadequate cultivated land. According to an investigation by the Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources, China presently has a total of 1,826 million mu (about 122 million hectares) of cultivated land, which is equivalent to 0.093 hectares per capita. This represents only one-third of the average cultivated land area per capita in the world, yet China has the largest population in the world: 1.37 billion inhabitants in 2010, accounting for 19.6% of the world’s total. In other words, if China did not import food and relied solely on domestic supplies, it would need to feed nearly 20% of the world’s population with less than 10% of the world’s total cultivated land. The combined effects of a large and growing population, continued economic development, concerns about national food supplies, and the scarcity of land resources have increased the demand for cultivated land (Yang 2004). However, the actual supply of cultivated land has been declining: the area of cultivated land has steadily diminished from 130.2 million hectares (Mha) in 1996 to 121.7 Mha in 2008 (Figure 5.1). This implies that more than 6.5% of the cultivated land area disappeared during a 12-year period. This has created a major challenge for China to guarantee a stable domestic food supply for its population. In addition to urbanization, some ecological and environmental protection policies and projects have been the primary causes for the reduction in cultivated land area (Wang et al. 2012a). These eco-environmental protection policies and projects include: • Grain for Green Program: This program is one of the six great ecological forest programs in China, whose aim is to convert tracts of cultivated land with serious soil erosion, desertification, or salinization to grassland or forest in line with local climatic...