The extraordinary growth of China is hard for us in the West to grasp because every change is multiplied by such large numbers of people. There are now 49 Chinese cities with populations of over one million, and now the more wealthy are moving into vast suburbs with larger houses and more land. Many then need a car and although now their are only 12 million private cars, sales are growing at 26% per year. These relatively rich people consume far more of everything than they did when they were in villages, including food. They want a more western diet with more meat and alchohol, needing much more land per person just when the amount of farmland per person is going down due to desertification in the north west of the country and the massive loss of good, flat, fertile land for the expansion of cities.
It should be remembered that until recently, only about one billion of us were big consumers of food, energy and other resources. The other five billion were relatively low consumers. The world is adding about 90 million people to it’s population each year, but more significant is the similar amount of people in the world each year who move up to become consumers on a similar scale to us. This is the problem we face, more people wanting more of everything when in the case of food at least, there will be less.
When a real food crisis hits the world, it will be countries like China with huge foriegn exchange reserves that will be able to buy what food is available.
