Climate Change to Strain China Food Supply by 2030 BEIJING -
Climate change and a growing population mean China, which is
already losing farmland to deserts and urban sprawl, could face
a food shortfall of 100 million metric tons by 2030, a top
weather official said. "Global warming may cause the grain
harvest to fall by 5 to 10 percent ... by 2030," the official
China Daily quoted Zheng Guoguang, head of the State
Meteorological Administration as saying. Around the same time
the country's population is expected to reach a peak of 1.5
billion, up from the current 1.3 billion. To feed the extra
mouths with lower yields of grain, Beijing would need an extra
10 million hectares of arable land, or around 8 percent of that
currently under cultivation, Zheng told a conference in Inner
Mongolia. But China already struggles to provide food for one
fifth of the world's population with just 7 percent -- and
shrinking -- of global farmland. It became a net importer of
food in 2004. Zheng did not say how China could find