Rapid urbanization in China: A real challenge to soil protection and food security

To feed its 1.3 billion Population with a per capita cultivated land far below the world average, China is already facing a great challenge of land scarcity. Accelerated urbanization along with explosive economic growth has further worsened the shortage of agricultural land over the last two decades. Increasing concern over land is expressed in terms of soil availability for grain production and soil quality degradation. Based on official statistics and data derived front satellite imagery, dynamics of China's cultivated land over the past two decades is outlined and the causes and destinations of cultivated land loss are analyzed in this paper. Particularly, urbanization-related land-use changes and their spatial variation across the country are demonstrated. Furthermore, impacts of urbanization and associated waste disposals, consequent shifts of soil utilization on areal soil quality are expatiated. It is initially concluded that China's cultivated land is shrinking at a rather shocking rate. Although conversion to urban and industrial uses took up a comparatively small share of total cultivated land loss, urbanization should still be considered as a great threat to future agricultural production for several reasons. Urbanization is increasing the risk of soil pollution through waste disposal and acid deposition derived from urban air pollution. Facing rapid urbanization, China is making positive policy responses to the challenge of decreasing availability of cultivated land and offering unremitting efforts towards the goal of national food security. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.