Fellow Story
Chen quoted on pressures on agricultural land in China
Economic factors within China are also prompting the government to look outside the country for agricultural land. Jia-Ching Chen, a research fellow at Brown University who studies the tensions between urbanization and rural land use in China, said China already has very little farmland per capita, and there is increasing pressure on the existing land as the government steps up urbanization efforts to cope with the growing population. He said the increasing affluence of China’s population means appetites are growing for meat, so China is importing grain for livestock feed. Other major agricultural imports are for industrial purposes, such as crops used in biofuel production.
