Emerging Trade-Related Threats to Food Security: Evidence From China

Introduction

The majority of scholars agree that liberalized trade plays a vital role in stabilizing food supplies and food prices since abundant foods stocks in some countries coexist with shortages in some others (Erokhin, 2017, 2018). Unforeseen price surges can push millions of people in developing countries into poverty, aggravating income inequalities and threatening social cohesion. Malnutrition can result in maternal mortality and stunted growth of children, reducing their learning ability and lowering their productivity in adulthood. Government are pursuing various policy options for ensuring food security: expanding investment in agriculture; encouraging climate-friendly technology; restoring degraded farmland; improving post-harvest storage and supply chains; and even indulging in the promotion of niche products. They face special challenges as their growing middle class shifts from traditional staples to more nutritious products such as meat, fish and dairy whose higher resource intensity requires expansion of domestic agricultural capacity or greater reliance on imports. But importing countries also worry about unreliability of world markets in times of need and promote self-sufficiency in food along with trade policy restrictions.

Liberalization of international trade in food and agricultural products can affect the availability of certain foods by removal of barriers to imports, but also to foreign investments in the development of domestic production (Erokhin & Ivolga, 2012; Erokhin, Ivolga, & Heijman, 2014). Thow and Hawkes (2009) found that availability of processed food has risen in developing countries after foreign direct investment by multinational food companies. Thus, changes in trade policies have facilitated the rising availability and consumption of foods. Dorosh (2004) found the positive contribution of trade liberalization to food security and stabilization of supply and food market. Protection policies, including administrative restrictions of food imports with a view to increasing food self-sufficiency of the country, on the contrary, may cause unnecessary social costs and place food self-sufficiency into conflict with the goals of food security and poverty reduction. Warr (2011) studied the effects of an import ban on rice introduced in Indonesia and concluded that it let to achieve the required level of food self-sufficiency, but at the expense of reducing food security.

Despite a generally accepted belief that free trade plays a vital role in stabilizing food supplies and food prices since abundant foods stocks in some countries coexist with shortages in some others, liberalization of international trade has become a significant source of tension in contemporary agricultural change (Lee, 2007). In the conditions of globalization, where liberalization of food trade and the reduction of administrative protection of food producers are mandated by the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), many countries have lost a part of their sovereignty over food policies (Lawrence & McMichael, 2012). Some of them (primarily, developing ones) have become food dependent, others managed to benefit from easier access to foreign markets and unified framework of global trade in food. In general, globalization has refocused attention from trade-based food self-sufficiency to availability-based food security. According to Ghosh and Ghoshal (2017), structural changes in global food market have put in place concerns and challenges related to food prices, stability of food supply, and trade-economic aspects of food accessibility and affordability.