"In Will Africa Feed China?, Deborah Brautigam, one of the world's leading experts on China and Africa, challenges the conventional wisdom that the Chinese are leading the great African land grab. Her eye-opening analysis sheds new light on the myths and realities of China's evolving global quest for food security"--

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.

Hunger is a daily reality for a billion people. More than six decades after the technological discoveries that led to the Green Revolution aimed at ending world hunger, regular food shortages, malnutrition, and poverty still plague vast swaths of the world. And with increasing food prices, climate change, resource inequality, and an ever-increasing global population, the future holds further challenges.In One Billion Hungry, Sir Gordon Conway, one of the world's foremost experts on global food needs, explains the many interrelated issues critical to our global food supply from the science of agricultural advances to the politics of food security. He expands the discussion begun in his influential The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twenty-First Century, emphasizing the essential combination of increased food production, environmental stability, and poverty reduction necessary to end endemic hunger on our planet. Conway addresses a series of urgent questions about global hunger: • How we will feed a growing global population in the face of a wide range of adverse factors, including climate change? • What contributions can the social and natural sciences make in finding solutions?• And how can we engage both government and the private sector to apply these solutions and achieve significant impact in the lives of the poor?Conway succeeds in sharing his informed optimism about our collective ability to address these fundamental challenges if we use technology paired with sustainable practices and strategic planning.Beginning with a definition of hunger and how it is calculated, and moving through issues topically both detailed and comprehensive, each chapter focuses on specific challenges and solutions, ranging in scope from the farmer's daily life to the global movement of food, money, and ideas. Drawing on the latest scientific research and the results of projects around the world, Conway addresses the concepts and realities of our global food needs: the legacy of the Green Revolution; the impact of market forces on food availability; the promise and perils of genetically modified foods; agricultural innovation in regard to crops, livestock, pest control, soil, and water; and the need to both adapt to and slow the rate of climate change. One Billion Hungry will be welcomed by all readers seeking a multifaceted understanding of our global food supply, food security, international agricultural development, and sustainability.

The rise of China is no doubt one of the most important events in world economic history since the Industrial Revolution. Mainstream economics, especially the institutional theory of economic development based on a dichotomy of extractive vs. inclusive political institutions, is highly inadequate in explaining China's rise. This book argues that only a radical reinterpretation of the history of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West (as incorrectly portrayed by the institutional theory) can fully explain China's growth miracle and why the determined rise of China is unstoppable despite its current 'backward' financial system and political institutions. Conversely, China's spectacular and rapid transformation from an impoverished agrarian society to a formidable industrial superpower sheds considerable light on the fundamental shortcomings of the institutional theory and mainstream 'blackboard' economic models, and provides more-accurate reevaluations of historical episodes such as Africa's enduring poverty trap despite radical political and economic reforms, Latin America's lost decades and frequent debt crises, 19th century Europe's great escape from the Malthusian trap, and the Industrial Revolution itself.

China’s food security has never failed to attract the public’s attention. Feeding China’s large population has always been a huge challenge. The latest large-scale famine took place in 1958–62 during which approximately 37 million people died of starvation. However, since the early 1980s, China’s food availability has improved drastically. The important question is then: has China achieved its food security? Although China’s food availability has significantly improved, it has not achieved a high level of food security due to the lack of progress in several other important dimensions of food security. The book examines China’s food security practices in the past six decades, explores the root causes that led to food shortages or abundances, and elaborates on the challenges that China has to deal with in order to improve its future food security. China’s quest for food security serves as a valuable lesson for many other countries to learn through China’s experiences and to better manage their food security in the future. The book also draws attention to the fact that China’s food security status has a huge impact on the global community and hence global collaboration is a mutually beneficial approach.

This book interrogates the inevitability and practicability of full-scale, land-intensive capitalist agriculture in China, whilst analyzing the labor-intensive industrious revolution as an alternative rural development path. It presents a critical account of the recent rise of agrarian capitalism as a force that would undermine hundreds of millions of people's livelihoods in the populous country. The Land Question in China traces the roots of the industrious revolution in China back to the eighteenth century, drawing comparisons between contemporary rural development and economic prosperity in the mid-Qing dynasty. In the context of neoliberal restructuring, it argues that vigorous rural development with broad access to land offers a solution to mitigate precarious urban employment and population pressure, while the transfer of land from villagers to large producers and urban investors will exacerbate these problems. Comparisons with South Africa and the East Asian economies of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan further illustrate this and help to develop a new interpretation of the industrious revolution and its contemporary relevance. Providing a critical examination of the "new land reform" in China from a world historical perspective, this book will be useful to students and scholars of sociology, economics, and development, as well as Chinese Studies.