As a densely populated country industrialises rapidly, its area under agriculture tends to shrink. This can create its own set of problems. One such problem, which Lester R Brown points out in Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures, is known as the Japan syndrome.
“If countries are already densely populated when they begin to industrialise rapidly, three things happen in quick succession to make them heavily dependant on grain imports: grain consumption climbs as incomes rise, grainland area shrinks, and grain production falls,” Brown writes.
As grain production falls, the country has to resort to importing grain. The author first observed this phenomenon in Japan, which now imports 70% of its grain and hence termed it the Japan syndrome.
The question to ask is why do these three things happen? As income levels rise, the consumption of various grains, such as rice and wheat, goes up. “In a fast industrialising country, grain consumption rises rapidly. Initially, rising incomes permit more direct consumption of grain, but before long, the growth shifts to the greater indirect consumption of grain in the form of grain-intensive livestock products, such as pork, poultry, and eggs,” writes Brown.
Rapid industrialisation is to blame, too. “First, as a country industrialises and modernises, cropland is used for industrial and residential development. As automobile ownership spreads, the construction of roads, highways, and parking lots… takes valuable land away from agriculture… Secondly, as rapid industrialisation pulls labour out of the countryside, it often leads to less double cropping, a practice that depends on quickly harvesting one grain crop once it’s ripe and immediately preparing the seedbed for the next crop… Third, as incomes rise, diets diversify, generating demand for more fruits and vegetables. This in turn leads farmers to shift land from grain to these more profitable high-value crops.”
This syndrome was first observed in Japan. “Japan was essentially self-sufficient in grain when its grain harvested area peaked in 1955. Since then, the grainland area has shrunk by half. The multiple cropping index has dropped from nearly 1.4 crops per hectare per year in 1960 to scarcely one crop today... With grain consumption climbing and production falling, grain imports soared… A similar analysis for South Korea and Taiwan shows a pattern almost identical with that of Japan.”
If countries like South Korea and Taiwan import more than what they produce internally, it doesn’t create a worldwide problem. But when China imports any commodity, prices more often than not go through the roof. China is now gradually falling victim to the Japan syndrome, and that is worrying.
“Perhaps the most alarming recent world agricultural event is the precipitous fall in China’s grain production since 1998. After an impressive climb from 90 million tonnes in 1950 to a peak of 392 million tonnes in 1998, China’s grave harvest fell in four of the next five years, dropping to 322 million tonnes in 2003. For perspective, this decline of 70 million tonnes exceeds the entire grain harvest of Canada.”
What makes the Japan syndrome even more dangerous in China is that “it is losing grainland to expanding deserts and it is faced with spreading water shortages that are shrinking the grain harvest… China’s deserts are advancing as its 1.3 billion people and 404 million cattle, sheep, and goats put unsustainable pressure on the land.”
It also does not help is the fact that most of the population is concentrated in the eastern part of China. “The sheer size of China’s population of 1.3 billion is impressive, but even more impressive is the fact that 1,193 million of them live in 46 percent of the country.
The five sprawling provinces of Tibet, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Gansu, and Inner Mongolia, have only 81 million people —- just 6 percent of the national total. Thus industrial and residential construction and the land paved for roads, highways, and parking lots will be concentrated in less than half the country, where 94 percent of the people live. People are crowded in this region simply because this is where arable land and water are,” writes Brown.
As China progresses and people’s standard of living improves, automobile ownership in the country is growing. That’s creating another set of problems, says Brown. “If China had Japan’s automobile ownership rate of one car for every two people, it would have a fleet of 640 million, a forty fold increase from the 16 million today. Such a fleet would require paving almost 13 million hectares of land - again, most of it likely cropland. This figure is equal to two thirds of China’s 21 million hectares of riceland- land that produces 120 million tonnes of rice - the country’s principal staple food staple.”
The rice deficit in China is serious and the country has been covering the shortfall by drawing down on its stocks. “In some ways, the rice deficit is even more serious. Trying to cover an annual rice shortfall of 10 million tonnes in a world where annual rice exports total only 26 million tonnes could create chaos in the world rice economy,” writes Brown.
The Japan syndrome is set to spread beyond China. “The obvious question now is which other countries will enter a period of declining grain production because of the same combination of forces? Among those that come to mind are India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and Mexico.”
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