Supplement: It is the study of international cooperation on food security and nutrition in China that supported by WFP, IFPRI etc. for reference of further study of SADL.
China’s progress on the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) – eradicating poverty and hunger – is widely acknowledged to be a key driver in advancing this goal globally. The economy has grown annually at the rate of 9% since the beginning of reforms in 1978. Improvements in food security, health services, incomes, family planning and care practices have led to great dropping in under-nutrition rates, from 272.1 million in 1990-1992 to 158 million in 2010-2013. Of the 256.6 million fewer undernourished people in the world between 1991 and 2012, 105.9 million (or 41%) were in China (World Bank, 2014).
According to a WFP/IFAD/FAO funded study on food security status in China (Yunlai Xiao et al, 2009), it was indicated that there were 91 million rural people in 12 out of 31 provinces affected by food insecurity, mainly concentrated in middle and west of China. The MDG Joint Programme “Improve the nutrition, food safety and food security for China’s most vulnerable women and children” (Fengying Nie et al, 2011) found that 15.2% of the surveyed households in poverty counties in western rural China is food-insecure and these households have some characteristics in common. The heads of food-insecure households tend to have less official education, less informal training and higher illiteracy rate than those from food-secure Households which was assumed to reduce their skills on agriculture production and opportunities for skilled labour. In rural areas, rearing of livestock has double benefits: it provides meat consumption, and it is a useful coping strategy when encounting shocks as it can be marketed to earn income. Food-insecure Households were found to have less livestock, pig for instance than food secure Households. The majority (75%) of the food secure Households have at least one pig, while only half of the food-insure Households have.
When an in-depth study evaluates the nutrition status, the story becomes more challenging (Fengying Nie et al, 2014). The food consumption in poor areas is lack of diversity, consumption mainly including staple food, vegetables, pork. Few households consume fish and shrimp, dairy products, beef and mutton. 24.3% of households can not meet the standards of energy intake. And this proportion is higher than the estimation with Food Consumption Score (FCS) which only counts the food consumption frequency. And the situation becomes worse when calculating protein. Around 40% of households are lack of protein intake, especially the high-quality protein (soy protein, animal protein) intake.
But the diet change is motivating larger demand of animal source food which leads to improvement of food security and nutrition, especially in rural China where the growth rate of average annual income surpassed the urban income continuously in the last 5 years. The great achievement in precise targeting poverty reduction, effective policy support in value chain development, the resilience enhancement of social protection and the new food security and nutrition strategy will guarantee a positive expect for eliminating poverty by 2020 and ending hunger and undernutrition by 2025 (IFPRI, 2015).
Reference
World Bank. 2014. World Bank Development Indicators database. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Accessed May 10, 2014. http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.
Yunlai Xiao, Fengying Nie. 2009.A Report on the Status of China’s Food Security. China Agricultural Science and Technology Press. Beijing.
Fengying Nie, Jiaqi Huang, and Jieying Bi. 2014.Food Consumption of Households in Poverty-Stricken Areas of West China: The Case of Shaanxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou. Proceedings of 2013 World Agricultural Outlook Conference, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-54389-0_7, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
Fengying Nie, et al, 2011. Analysis of Food Security and Vulnerability in Six Counties in Rural China. China Agricultural Science and Technology Press. Beijing.
Fengying Nie et al, 2016. Comprehensive Food Security and Nutrition Vulnerability Analysis in Rural China. To be published in 2016.
International Food Policy Research Institute. 2015. 2014–2015 Global Food Policy Report. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.
Fangquan Mei