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D. Prospects for trade..

VII. Food consumption - -

A. Present situation..

B. Grain imports and the stability of agricultural growth..
C. Grain import policy.

VIII. Near and longer-term prospects for food production...

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TABLES

1. China: Estimated seasonal rice crop statistics for 1976--
2. China: Imports of grain, calendar years 1961-78.
3. China: Trade in major agricultural commodities.

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4. Estimated Chinese per capita food consumption, nutrient values.. 5. China: Grain and cotton production estimates.

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Agriculture in the People's Republic of China is a mixture of modern and premodern elements. Elements of the traditional agricultural system continue to exist throughout the countryside, and in most areas modernization has proceeded slowly. Even where modernization is most advanced, traditional methods have persisted and been adapted to take advantage of new inputs and methods of production.

In most respects agriculture remains today what it has always been-subsistence-level production involving the great bulk of the labor force. Despite the large proportion of workers now involved— 80 percent of the labor force-agriculture accounts for less than onefourth of China's gross national product. Since 1949 agriculture has grown much slower than industry. Because of its strategic place in the economy, it nonetheless is accorded the highest degree of importance in development plans.

The agricultural sector's primary role is production of food. The Chinese must feed nearly one-fourth of the world's population-1 billion people on the products of only 7 percent of the world's arable land. This is accomplished by an intensive system of agriculture which is as much like gardening as it is like farming.

Agriculture also provides raw materials to industry, and in turn it has increasingly become a market for many of industry's products. In addition, agriculture provides products for export and is the country's most important source of foreign exchange earnings. These earnings more than pay for the grain, sugar, and other agricultural products which are imported.

Because of this central role, fluctuations in agricultural production have a disproportionately large effect on the rest of the economy. The Chinese do not view agricultural development as their most significant ultimate economic aim. It is important in the long run mainly as a means of supporting industrialization. At the present stage of economic development, however, planners and leaders acknowledge that agriculture must have first priority.

This paper is devoted mainly to describing the present situation in Chinese agriculture and its recent development. Because of the sheer size and complexity of the agricultural sector, change is slow and growth is hard won. Evaluation of agriculture's present ability to meet the demands of the economy provides some insight into the likelihood of future demands being met.

The main body of this paper consists of seven sections. Section II, which is on resource endowment, gives some perspective on the problem of feeding a huge population on a limited amount of arable land. Section III describes changes in agricultural development policy over time. Section IV discusses grain production, which accounts for nearly one-half the total value of agricultural output,

as well as industrial crops, livestock, and other types of output. Section V discusses factors of production and their modernization. Sections VI and VIII, which are on trade and consumption, are brief discussions of current trends. Section VII on agricultural development problems and prospects discusses the likely future course of agricultural development in China given present capabilities and the strengths and weaknesses of current programs.

II. CHINA'S RESOURCE ENDOWMENT

A. Land

The history of the development of Chinese agriculture has been marked by the expansion of the population onto new arable land, and by increasing unit yields on land which was already cultivated.1 As new land that could be readily cultivated has become scarcer, and as the population has increased, the importance of unit yields has become greater. By now about the only feasible way to raise agricultural production is to raise yields on land that is now cultivated, and most current agricultural programs are designed with this in mind. While the total land area of the PRC is about the same as that of the continental United States, only 11 percent can be cultivated as farmland, compared to about 22 percent in the United States. Efforts to increase the arable area continue, but increases are hard and expensive to win. The land that is not already cultivated is not very fertile, and yields on some of the marginal lands now in cultivation are low.

1 See Perkins, Dwight H., Agricultural Development in China 1368-1968. Chicago: Aldine, 1969.

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Natural divisions of climate and topography separate the main agricultural area, the eastern half of the country, into two broad segments-North and South China-with the break occurring roughly at the Yangtze River 2 (see figure 1). The river separates the highprecipitation, semitropical South from the drier North, where precipitation is more seasonal. Agriculture in the South is based upon paddy rice, while in the North the base is dry land crops, especially coarse grains and wheat.

In the rice region, the climate permits a longer growing season and multicropping of large areas. Soils are poor, but the supply of water is adequate, and the density of both human and animal population means that large amounts of organic fertilizer are available. Chinese rice yields per unit of sown area are much higher than in most developing

2 See Buck, John Lossing, Land Utilization in China. Nanking: University of Nanking, 1937.

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