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The Chinese are coming

───   10:16 Wed, 14 Jun 2017

The Chinese are coming | News Article
Omri van Zyl

Given global food security fears – climate change and geopolitical instability – the question remains, who will feed the world, and by and large Africa is the perfect continent and solution to this increasing global risk.


So, let’s see what the picture looks like 50 years from now.

By 2050 it is estimated that the earth's human population will be 9.07 billion, with 62% of the people who will live in Africa, Southern Asia and Eastern Asia - numerically this is the same as if all the world's current population lived just in these regions. In addition, another 3 000 000 000 will be spread across the rest of the world.

Tractors have a skewed distribution, which splits the regions of the world into two groups. The people living in the larger group of regions have an average of fewer than four tractors per thousand people. People living in the other group of regions have more than thirteen tractors per thousand people. Thus, the rate of tractor ownership in one group of regions is at least three times higher than that in the other group of regions. The top ten territories for tractor ownership are all European, the bottom ten are mainly African. It is important that this is a count of working tractors because broken tractors are not useful to farmers.

When analysing the data, Africa will have a large population that are not well educated – the low agriculture mechanisation rate and technology adaptation challenge also imply that Africa will not be able to feed itself, the question is who will.

China’s 1.4 billion people are building up an appetite that is changing the way the world grows and sells food. The Chinese diet is becoming more like that of the average American, forcing companies to scour the planet for everything from bacon to bananas.

But China’s efforts to buy or lease agricultural land in developing nations show that building farms and ranches abroad won’t be enough. Ballooning populations in Asia, Africa and South America will add another 2 billion people within a generation and they too will need more food.

That leaves China with a stark ultimatum: If it is to have enough affordable food for its population in the second half of this century, it will need to make sure the world grows food for 9 billion people.

Its answer is technology.

China’s agriculture industry, from the tiny rice plots tended by 70-year-old grandfathers to the giant companies that are beginning to challenge global players like Nestle SA and Danone SA, is undergoing a revolution that may be every bit as influential as the industrial transformation that rewrote global trade. The change started four decades ago when the country began to recast its systems of production and private enterprise. Those reforms precipitated an economic boom, driven by factories, investment and exports, but the changes down on the farm were just as dramatic.

A change in diet is accelerating the search for overseas supplies. Beef sales to China have risen 19,000 percent in the past decade. Imports of soybeans, used in animal feed, have grown so fast that the government quietly dropped the grain from its self-sufficiency list in 2014.  Land reforms lifted production of grains like rice and wheat, and millions joined a newly wealthy middle class that ate more vegetables and pork and wanted rare luxuries like beef and milk.

The bottom line is that Africa is unlikely to chart the way for food production globally – countries like China will.  Don’t be surprised if China takes over Africa to produce food for its people.

China’s new merger via Syngenta and ChemChina of $43 billion shows a big step from China in the direction of Europe and the rest of the developed world.  

We see more and more land acquisitions in Africa and very soon mechanisation will follow. The ethical basis of these land acquisitions must be questioned but another element of this must be laid in front of African leaders.  

If we do not develop our own continent – someone else will. This is probably inevitable – it’s likely to come from an Asian superpower with China and perhaps India the most likely candidates.

Looking at the obvious numbers and data – Africa will be a dependent continent for time to come. The basics are still not in place and we don’t see this changing.  With the global economy getting more mobile, capital will remain shy, African leaders do not seem to change the game for their people but seem to be in it for themselves.

Who buys the African leaders will win the chess game, and with global resources dwindling, Asian super powers are starting to make their move.

Food refugees are almost a given, keeping the magnitude of these changes in mind. My prediction is that most of these will come from Africa and move up to Europe and eventually the Americas.  

Inter-country conflicts about water and access to arable land will increase putting more tension on geopolitical relations.


(Omri van Zyl is the Executive Director of Agri SA)

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