Daily Lessons from Life 24 June 2010 - China's eating to sharply outpace food output-OECD

"China's eating to sharply outpace food output-OECD - Thu, Jun 24, 2010 Reuters

LONDON, June 24 (Reuters) - China's rate of food consumption growth is expected to be double its domestic agricultural production growth by 2019, prompting steady inports growth, a senior OECD official told Reuters on Thursday.

'For China one of the major challenges is food security,' said Wayne Jones, head of the agro-food trade and markets division at the the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

'It's a country that will become an increasingly large food importer,' he said on the sidelines of an agricultural conference Oilseeds, sugar and animal feed grains such as corn are all set to see increased Chinese import demand, said Jones."

A good strategic and long term challenge for China to resolve and for the rest of the world to recognize! Why does the rest of the world needs to take note? The reason is simple: so that it does not assume that China is the next great economic power that will replace USA or any other BIG countries worried about it!!

Lessons for me are:

1. singing China's praises about its economic progress and all that are just very short sighted thinking, or deliberate, as China cannot even produce enough to feed itself! All the so-called surpluses MUST find a way to ensure that investment in low pay-back food production must be given significant attention;

2. when Chinese cannot feed itself, it can always let millions of its citizens leave for a greener pasture like the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, or France, etc, and the liberal West will NOT be able to handle this outflow of hungry refugees! So, the West, that include the USA, better be honest about things whenever they pressed China to let Chinese Yuan appreciate so as to reduce their import from China. These surpluses NEED to be chaneled to a long term perspective of investing in food production!;

3. wise leaders must insist on investing for the long term besides keeping an eye on the immediate future. Leaders must guard against the human nature of choosing 'instant gratification' against 'thankless investment for long term viability'!

Thanks for highlighting the issue of food production in China. Hopefully the world will help China to find the solution that are beneficial to the world instead of shifting blame to one nation or China sending its hungries to the rest of the world who could ill afford to keep them!!