Hi Michael, Land tenure is changing. After the rural reforms in the early 80s when the communes/brigades were disbanded, rural land usufruct rights were given to households while ownership remained in the hands of the state at the local level.
Rural land usufruct rights are now increasingly tradeable. The government encourages the development of integrated agricultural companies that either lease the land from villages, or establish contracts with individual farmers to produce. Many of these companies are foreign, I know of some big Hong Kong and Thai players, but I don't keep track of this stuff very much. There's a good recent article about this here: http://www.chinastudygroup.org/index.php?type=news&id=5360 Yes, grain production has been falling in China recently, although everyone claims that there is plenty of reserve grain. Usually urban sprawl and shady land deals are blamed for the reduction in grain production, not shifting production. China lost arable land equal to the area of Maryland to these processes last year according to this interesting article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6653-2004Apr12.html Cheers, Jonathan How is China able to export fruits and nuts? Where do the farmers find the land to grow such crops? Are they cutting back on the production of grains? ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
