30% of China's farmland has disappeared in 40 years..

[SoCalDem]

This is a very interesting video-on-demand about how agriculture in China is suffering.. (and yet they EXPORT)..


http://www.learner.org/resources/series85.html?pop=yes&vodid=201189&pid=478#

they will ask you to register. it's free and not much info required..

there are gazillions of great PBS stuff there on VOD..

[dave_p]

1. Hold the panic

The date's key here - 1996. That story was everywhere, but the Jan 1997 first agricultural census found millions of hectares missed by the previous official annual estimates, confirming satellite image surveys. The government still warns against excessive conversion to nonagricultural use and estimates the loss at about 1m ha annually over 1997-2003, but I'd wait & see what the Jan 2007 farm census comes up with.

[robcon]

2. In addition, agricultural productivity is way up.

Yields per hectare have been climbing significantly as farms have been rationalized (i.e. lots and lots of people moving to the cities, larger farms, etc.) There's no shortage of food in China now - something that couldn't have bee said 40 years ago.