China is perhaps the most prominent example of a developing country that has transitioned from taxing to supporting agriculture. In recent years, Chinese price supports and subsidies have risen at an accelerating pace after they were linked to rising production costs. Per-acre subsidy payments to grain producers now equal 7 to 15 percent of those producers' gross income, but grain payments appear to have little influence on production decisions. Chinese authorities began raising price supports annually to bolster incentives, and Chinese prices for major farm commodities are rising above world prices, helping to attract a surge of agricultural imports. U.S. agricultural exports to China tripled in value during the period when China's agricultural support was accelerating. Overall, China's expansion of support is loosely constrained by World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments, but the country's price-support programs could exceed WTO limits in coming years. Chinese officials promise to continue increasing domestic policy support for agriculture, but the mix of policies may evolve as the Chinese agricultural sector becomes more commercialized and faces competitive pressures.

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. Brown shows that cropland losses are heavy in countries that are densely populated before industrialization, and that these countries quickly become net grain importers. We can see that process now in newspaper accounts from China as the government struggles with this problem.

China and India are the most extraordinary economic success stories of the developing world. Both nations’ economies have grown dramatically over the past few decades, elevating them from two of the world’s poorest countries into projected economic superpowers. As a result, the numbers of Chinese and Indians living in poverty have rapidly fallen and per capita incomes in China and India have quadrupled and doubled, respectively. This book investigates the reasons for these staggering accomplishments and the lessons that can be applied both to other developing nations and to the problem of poverty that remains in these two countries. The contributors pay particular attention to agriculture and the rural economy, examining how initial conditions and investments and the prioritization and sequencing of different policies and strategies have led to successes, and how the agricultural and rural sectors connect to overall economic expansion. They also emphasize the importance of anti-poverty programs and safety nets in helping poor people escape poverty. The book offers a set of policy and strategic options for future growth and poverty reduction. These include setting the right priorities for public spending, identifying trade and market reforms, building social safety nets for the poorest of the poor, and building accountable institutions that can provide public goods and services effectively. The book concludes by examining future challenges to China and India’s economic development, such as the need to ensure growth that is sustainable, equitable, and environmentally friendly. The Dragon and the Elephant offers valuable insights to development specialists anxious to multiply the benefits experienced by two of the greatest economic successes in recent times.

This book explains how policy changes affect farmers' production incentives and efficiency of resource allocation within and outside agriculture in modern China, paying particular attention to the effects of technical inputs on yield and efficiency of spatial crop production pattern. Drawing experiences of agricultural development in different periods after independence and employing two different quantitative techniques, it concludes that government's long term tendency to undermine the role of agriculture, lack of state investment and the inconsistency of market reforms are three major threats to sustained grain production and agricultural growth in China.

This book brings together unique experiences of India, China and Israel in overcoming economic, social, and natural resource challenges. Through its eleven chapters, the book captures the role of groundbreaking innovations in achieving unprecedented agricultural growth and stabilizing these nations. It provides a future outlook of the new challenges that will confront these countries in 2030 and beyond, related to tackling food and nutrition security, sustainable agricultural growth and adhering to improved food safety standards. This book provides useful insights for exploring technological innovations and policies that can address these future challenges and develop profitable and sustainable agriculture. This volume also highlights valuable lessons that India, China and Israel provide for the rest of the developing world where population is growing fast; natural resources are limited; and it is a challenge to produce enough food, feed and fibre for their populations. Tracing the historical past, this book is an impressive resource for academicians, policymakers, practitioners, agribusiness players, entrepreneurs in understanding the role of innovations in addressing future challenges.

This book identifies the main challenges Chinese agriculture is confronting and considers how these challenges might be met. The performance of China's agricultural production is comprehensively assessed while the factors that affect agricultural productivity are examined through detailed econometric analysis and up to date nationally representative data.

Since its founding, the government of the People's Republic of China has strived to transform rural production, the theme of this volume of History of Contemporary China. Fourteen articles translated from the Chinese journal Contemporary History (Dangdai Zhongguo shi yanjiu) offer both empirical account and theoretical analysis of a broad range of historical events and issues, such as the guiding policy framework of the “three rural issues,” the causes and consequences of the deep plowing movement and the development of public canteens during the Great Leap Forward, child care, enterprises and collectives, and private lending in the post-Mao era, and the changing dynamics of interregional flows of goods and people throughout the second half of the 20th century. These studies shed light on the historical origins of some of the agricultural and rural problems in China today.