@article{Alexandratos:173993,
      recid = {173993},
      author = {Alexandratos, Nikos},
      title = {China's projected cereals deficits in a world context},
      journal = {Agricultural Economics: The Journal of the International  Association of Agricultural Economists},
      address = {1996-09},
      number = {968-2016-75674},
      pages = {16},
      year = {1996},
      abstract = {Lester Brown's recent writings about trends in China's  food consumption, production and rapidly rising import  requirements and his
predictions that the world is running  out of potential to increase production of cereals received  wide publicity in the press. They increased
awareness of  the problem among the public, which was stimulated by  recent declines in world cereals production per capita,  falling stocks
and sharp rises in world market prices. This  paper is an attempt on my part to extract a coherent  picture of what Brown says about China
and the world and  examine it in the light of what we know about this country  and of possible developments in the world as a whole. I  make
the following conclusions.
I. Brown misjudges China's  potential to maintain and indeed increase cereals  production because he misinterprets the data on land  losses
(he treats diversion of land from cereals to,  mainly, other crops and aquaculture as if such land were  lost to food production), he ignores
new data which  indicate that China has more agricultural land than  reported in official statistics and his projected numbers  do not account
for responses on the part of producers,  consumers and government policy to an increasing scarcity  of products and rising prices.
2. The analogies he draws  with the experiences of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are  inappropriate.
3. China will probably be a growing net  importer of cereals but at levels much below those  projected by Brown.
4. World production of cereals may  indeed grow at a lower rate than in the long-term past (but  not as low as that projected by Brown)
which could be  sufficient to accommodate China's growing import  requirements and the probable ones of other countries.
5.  The world food problem is one of persistence of very low  food consumption levels and high incidence of  undernutrition in many
developing countries, mainly in  sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
The persistence of  severe food insecurity problems reflects not so much  constraints in increasing food production in the world as  whole but
development failures (often agricultural  development failures) and the persistence of poverty in  certain countries.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/173993},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.173993},
}