News

October 13, 2008

China Has To Face Up To Problems Within Its Peasant Farming Population

By Sally White

Amidst the gloom and mayhem in financial markets, Chinese leaders held a vitally important meeting for world food. In addition to the global economic crisis, last week’s annual policy-setting meeting tackled issues facing the nation’s 730 million farmers. They are the source of so much of world food exports and trade in agriculture commodities, such as fertilisers, and a major factor in the world’s water crisis. China’s leaders consider solutions to the economic state of the farmers as a vital part of avoiding civil unrest at a time when the coastal regions remain so much more prosperous that the country’s interior. Discontent among the farmers and social imbalances are leading to rises in migration to the massively overcrowded and polluted cities.

Land reform is increasingly an issue as farmers need to be able to gear up to raise yields. At the moment farmers are allowed to have only 30-year leases on their tiny plots, averaging 1.5 acres, (compared to 15 acres in Eastern Europe and 432 in the US) with the government owning all the land. Farm yields, although up 50 per cent on 25 years ago, are plateauing.  

“China has too little land and too many farmers, “said Tang Min, deputy secretary-general of the China...