Study On Impact Of Grain Foreign Trade On Sustainable Utilization Of Cultivated Land Resources In China

In recent years, with the rapid development of scientific technology and productive forces, mankind has created unprecedented material wealth and accelerated the human socio-economic development process. However, there have also been a series of worldwide problems such as resource depletion, energy crisis and ecological environment deterioration. These problems can seriously hamper sustainable development of human socio-economy, and then threaten the future survival and development of all mankind. Since Conference on Environment and Development in the United Nations was held in June 1992 in Brazil, mankind has begun to pay attention to the balance of worldwide ecosystem and rational utilization of resources.Cultivated land is the basic resource of existence and development of human society. Whether we can realize the sustainable utilization of cultivated land is a major problem which impacts overall sustainable development. Cultivated land resources are under the extremely condition in China. According to the fifth census in 2000, China has a population of 1295 million, the national average population density is 132 people per km~2 and cultivated land area per capita is 0.093 hectares, compared with 0.25 hectares of the world. China's cultivated land per capita is 40 percent less than that of the world average, one-sixth than Russia and USA, one-fifteenth than Canada, half than India (Qu Junfeng etc., 2007). On estimation, cultivated land area will decrease by 6.45×10~5 hectares by 2010. Cultivated land area per capita will drop to 0.08 hectares from 2020 to 2030 (Chen Baiming, etc., 2000).At the same time, China's grain problem has become one of the hot topic of widespread concern in the international community. With the continuously implementation of the urbanization and the industrialization, cultivated land has been occupied and transformed from grain production uses to economic construction. Therefore, it's crucial to maintain the sustainable utilization of cultivated land resources. Under the circumstances of global integration, China is playing a more and more important role in international agricultural products trade. Grain trade, including inter-regional grain flows, has existed since ancient times. However, people haven't realized natural resources flow underlined in the grain trade until the 1990s. With these agricultural products (mainly grain products) as the carrier, the virtual cultivated land has greatly increased and has a direct impact on the sustainable utilization of cultivated land resources.On the basis of the concept of virtual cultivated land and theories and methods of virtual cultivated land contents of agricultural products, this paper analyzed the relations between cultivated land pressure and virtual cultivated land trade as an example of main grain production regions. Thus it analyzed the relations between grain foreign trade and sustainable utilization of cultivated land and constructed a new strategy for China's cultivated land resources security under the circumstance of globalization, which is of strategic significance to realizing China's food security and socio-economic development.The main conclusions of the paper are shown as follows:First, since the foundation of new China to 1995, the quantity of cultivated land resources in China hardly changed, but the quantity was in obvious decreasing trend. China has low proportion of good cultivated land and high proportion of sloping land; seriously lack of soil nutrients; serious soil erosion, deteriorating soil fertility; worsening cultivated land pollution. Through the establishment of the model of cultivated land pressure index, China's cultivated land pressure has turned out a wavy style trend since reform and opening up, but in some years the pressure index was very huge, which illustrated cultivated land is under very obvious pressure in China.Secondly, since the reform and opening up, China has turned out a net grain import county. The highest of annual net import was 24,840,000 tons in 2004 and the highest of annual net export was 6,220,000 tons in 1993. Products of grain foreign trade are mainly rice, corn, wheat and soybeans. Among these, wheat and soybeans are China's major import varieties, and rice and maize are the main export varieties.Third, China has maintained a larger trade deficit in virtual cultivated land. Since the reform and opening, with the exception of individual years, the virtual cultivated land trade showed a net import status, which grew from 4,157,200 hectares in 1978 to 15,317,500 hectares in 2006 with an average annual increase of 4.77 percent. Grain import, simultaneously accompanied by the virtual cultivated land resources has important practical significance to easing security pressure of the grain and cultivated land and preserving sustainable development of the ecological environment.Fourth, the pressure of China's cultivated land has negative relations with net imports of virtual cultivated land, cultivated land area per capita and grain output per capita, and has positive relations with GDP per capita and the proportion of sown area of grain crops in that of agricultural crops. In other words, grain imports have alleviated pressure of cultivated land and promoted sustainable utilization of cultivated land. Virtual cultivated land strategy applies not only to inter-countries but also domestic inter-provincial regions. China is a vast country. There are different endowments of natural agriculture resources and different grain varieties and their production revenue in different areas. In the long term, with the use of virtual cultivated land strategy, we can play the comparative advantages, adjust the structure of grain varieties and enhance the construction of major grain production regions. As for current "north to south of food", virtual cultivated land flow hidden in the grain flow opened the perspective of regional cultivated land management and cultivated land resource allocation, which has become an effective tool of guarantee the security of cultivated land resources and food.Fifth, on estimation, China's grain supply and demand gap respectively comes to 29.55 million tons and 36.99 million tons in 2010 and 2020, with the grain self-sufficiency rate of 94.82 percent and 94.10 percent. Based on the standard of 95 percent of grain self-sufficiency, China's grain security is probable in 2010 and 2020. At the same time, accompanied by grain import, virtual cultivated land trade also turns out net import, which respectively reaches 6,044,000 hectares and 6,936,000 hectares in 2010 and 2020. Generally, virtual cultivated land trade can improve the conditions of the pressure of China's cultivated land resources to some extent and contribute to the realization of China's double security of food and cultivated land.In the above analysis, this paper concluded that grain foreign trade can contribute to the realization of sustainable utilization of cultivated land to some extent and put forward some countermeasures of realizing sustainable utilization of cultivated land resources.