Will Food Import Guarantee Safer Food?

...

Beijing is one of the cities that accept transferred water from south, which hugely alleviates the stress from water scarcity. However, in 2011, a new problem appeared. According to the monitoring result of Beijing Institute of Hydrogeology and Engineering Geology, the level of local groundwater started to rise due to the project, technically speaking, it is a good thing, but the situation is there are many illegal landfill sites in Beijing, once the underground water level rises, it soaks the waste, which contaminates the quality of underground water (Fan et al., 2011). As a megacity using underground water as its main source of domestic water use, two out of three glasses of water that citizens in Beijing drink are from underground water (Fan et al., 2011), the contamination of underground water definitely would be a serious water and food security issue.

Obviously, hydraulic mission, like the South-North Water Transfer Project is no wild card in addressing water security and food security. And compared with its huge cost and other uncertain risks, importing food appears to be an easier, safer and comparatively cheaper alternative.

Based on imported food volumes, it is estimated that from 1990 to 2000, an annual average of 10.52 × 109m3 of virtual water had been contained in the imported cereal, which was equivalent to 23% of the water that the South-North Water Transfer Project transfers annually (Zhao, et al., 2005). Furthermore, due to the scarcity of water, in terms of the allocation, there is a tendency that more water is allocated to high-value or more profitable sectors like industry. As a matter of fact, in China, industrial and domestic water demands are superior to agricultural water use (Hong, 1999) due to the comparatively low direct economic output of agricultural production. For this reason, this amount of water embodied in the importing food would not necessarily be used in agriculture if it was transferred by the South-North Water Transfer Project. In this way, importing food secures a proper water allocation and guarantees food security to some extent.

With China’s accelerated urbanization, many types of pollution are increasing, and unfortunately, majority of them contribute to the declining water quality. It is now common knowledge that emission from industry gives rise to the worrying amount of carbon dioxide and causes global warming. However, this is not the whole story. Without oceans, the situation of global warming would be a lot more serious than now, because the oceans currently absorb roughly 20 to 35% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions (Khatiwala et al., 2009). But for sure, there are consequences. Since 1850, the acidity of the surface ocean has increased by almost 30% (Dupont and Pörtner, 2013), which put the marine ecosystem at risk--more acid oceans and loss of biodiversity. People mainly depending on seafood suffer greatly from these consequences. Also, with the developing industry of mining, and metal treatment, heavy metal pollution becomes serious (Wang et al., 2001). Heavy metal pollution risks food security by way of polluting or even poisoning water (Cheng, 2003).

The harsh fact is some of the damages we already made to the environment are irreversible or is going to take a long period of time to regain the previous ecological state. Therefore, in order to achieve local water security and food security, importing food from areas that are not affected by such problems would address the security issues in a relatively short period of time.

Disadvantages

Like stated, a state’s reliance on food import do solve some food and water security problems, especially the urgent ones. However, like its advantages, in terms of its long-term implications, the disadvantages of a state’s reliance on food import are equally significant.

Growing food deficit makes several countries more dependent on food import and at the same time, makes them more vulnerable to unstable factors of agricultural production markets and food supply chains both at home and abroad. In 2008, the global food price crisis broke out. The main factors acknowledged contributing to this crisis were declining agricultural production, higher energy costs and emphasis on cash crops, etc. (UNCTAD, 2009). According to the estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), increasing food prices pushed additional 40 million people into hunger in this crisis in 2008, raising the overall number of undernourished people in the world to 963 million, compared to 923 million in 2007 (FAO, 2008a). Global food prices had increased 83 per cent between 2005 and 2008. While maize prices almost tripled, wheat prices increased 127 per cent, and rice prices increased 170 per cent between January 2005 and June 2008 (UNCTAD, 2009). Among the countries that importing food accounts for a significant part of their agricultural products consumption, low-income food deficit countries (LIFDCs) (Maros and Martin, 2008) and least developed countries (LDCs) (IIED, 2003) are most vulnerable to the increase of food prices and suffer most in this crisis. When this food crisis broke out, in terms of the countries importing food, ascending food import bills contributed significantly to the increasing food prices. The food import bills of developing countries grew by 56 per cent in 2008 compared with a 37 per cent increase in 2007. What’s worse, the surging food import bills in low-income food deficit countries (LIFDCs), in Africa, the total food import bills increased by 74 per cent (FAO, 2011), which severely impacted poverty trends. Thus, the countries are more-dependent on food import could get hit hardly when such food crisis breaks out.

When a country is questioned about its domestic food security, food import automatically becomes many people’s choice. In 2008, a shocking scandal about melamine–contaminated milk in China broke out. Melamine is a chemical used to produce plastics and flooring, was found added illegally to dairy products to cheat the protein-level check, in other words, to raise the protein content of dairy products. As a consequence, more than 294,000 infants were sickened and developed kidney problems because of the melamine. And at least six babies were killed by the melamine-tainted milk powder (Xinhua, 2009). Almost straight after the scandal, China’s import (through Shanghai port) of powder and baby food were up 32.5 percent by weight during the following 6 months, compared with the same period from 2007 to 2008. Parents were too scared to buy the domestic dairy products. However this resort to foreign milk powder has taken another hit. At the beginning of this year, some Dicyandiamide (DCD) has been detected unexpectedly in several New Zealand milk