Introduction
Sustenance is seen as a high priority for existence in the nation, which prioritizes its residents. The basic prerequisite for a country's survival and progress, food security also serves as the barest indicator of how stable its economy is. China's food security is under strain from a number of factors, including population increase, a lack of resources, and environmental damage. The creation of genetic engineering technology to ensure food security has gained a lot of attention because it is difficult to significantly improve the quantity and quality of agricultural goods using conventional methods. Modern agricultural biotechnology is based on genetic engineering technology, which has shown to have significant potential for reducing production losses, boosting output capacity, cutting input costs, conserving natural resources, enhancing food quality and safety, and preserving the ecosystem.
China's food security faces a number of difficulties. China has maintained a consistent level of food self-sufficiency at over 95% since the 1990s, indicating an upward trend. China's food production has specifically increased steadily since 2004 as a result of the central government's increased support for agriculture, and per capita consumption has remained stable at 380 kg, which is close to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization's (FAO) safety level of 400 kg. Despite the fact that China currently has high food security, long-term food shortages continue to be a concern, and the balance between supply and demand for food will remain delicate. The following are the primary reasons restricting and endangering China's food security.
The growth of the grain demand is inflexible. In the case of our nation, population expansion, rising economic status, and quickening urbanization are the main causes of the rise in grain consumption. The shift in the structure of grain consumption leads in an unavoidable trend of rising indirect demand over a sizable period of time in the future. The National Bureau of Statistics reported that as of the end of 2008, there were 1.328 billion people living in China. In the ensuing 30 years, it is anticipated that the global population would continue to grow by 8 to 10 million people annually, reaching 1.5 billion in the middle of the twenty-first century. Additionally, grain demand will rise even more as the economy grows and people's living standards rise. In the past, between 1978 and 2006, the direct per capita consumption of grain climbed by 98.5%, whilst the per capita consumption of meat, poultry, and eggs increased by 155.64%. China is anticipated to need an additional 35 million tons of grain output year, with grain consumption topping 600 million tons by 2030, based on the FAO's criterion of per capita grain consumption of 400 kg annually.
Resources are becoming more and more of a constraint. Land and water resources are crucial for agricultural productivity, particularly grain production. China's grain production resources, on average, are significantly behind those of the rest of the world. According to the Ministry of Land and Resources, there were 122 million hectares of arable land in total in 2008, but only 913.40 m2 of it was per person, which is less than 40% of the global average. The decline in arable land shows rigidity in trend with the acceleration of industrialisation and the expansion of infrastructural construction. China's arable land dropped by more than 660,000 hectares year on average between 1996 and 2007. The quality of arable land is degrading as the amount of arable land declines. According to data, China's arable land now has a 1% organic content, which is much lower than the 2.5% to 4% in Europe and the US.
The availability of freshwater per person in our country is just a fifth of the global average, and more than 70% of it is used for agriculture, making it a country with a severe water shortage. Furthermore, the distribution of our water resources is unbalanced, with 81% of it concentrated in the Yangtze River and its southern regions, which occupy just 36% of arable land, and only 19% in the northern sections of the Huai River, which cover 64% of arable land. As the population grows and urbanization and industrialization advance, the lack of water resources will emerge as a major barrier to food production.
Natural calamities now have greater effects on food production. Recent years have seen significant changes in weather patterns and the frequency of droughts, which frequently affect agriculture due to natural disasters. The food security of China is greatly threatened by the fact that it is one of the nations in the world that is most severely affected by natural catastrophes. For instance, in 2003, 32516 hectares were affected by food-related disasters, yet only 43.07 million tons of food were produced, which was at the safety alert threshold.
It is now harder to maintain stable food development. China's agricultural production expenses have increased dramatically over the past few years due to higher costs for raw materials and labor in rural areas, but there hasn't been much of an increase in food prices. Grain farming is less profitable than labor migration or the planting of commercial crops, despite the government's increased support for food production. More young and middle-aged workers in rural areas opt to work outside, especially in areas that produce food, with over half of these workers working outside. The rural labor force is getting older. The challenge of preserving steady food production and safeguarding farmers' enthusiasm for grain farming is getting harder.
The domestic food market has become more challenging to control. The volume of global food trade has been decreasing since the middle of the 1980s, while prices have been increasing yearly.
Agricultural technology used in the past
A bottleneck has developed in the promotion of traditional agricultural technology. The planting area and yield level govern the food supply, and technological advancement has become a driving force by increasing yields. However, agricultural technology hasn't been able to innovate enough lately, and conventional technologies' effects on increasing yields have been eroding over time. Food yields only increased by 7.5% during the course of the 12 years between 1990 and 2001, with an average annual growth of 0.6%. A breakthrough increase in food production is difficult to achieve without major technological innovation. Furthermore, our nation's food production excessively relies on fertilizers and pesticides due to the limitations of conventional technology applications and inadequate promotion. According to data, our country uses three times as much nitrogen fertilizer and two times as much pesticides per unit area of farmed land than the rest of the globe. Pesticide and fertilizer use that is inefficient has an impact on agricultural productivity and farmer income, but it also lowers the quality of agricultural output and harms the agricultural environment.
