Food Grain Procurement and Consumption in China

This book analyses how the Chinese Government attempted to supply its vast, rapidly growing population with adequate grain, 1953–1980.

Kenneth R. Walker (Author)

9780521143851, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 24 June 2010

352 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.67 kg

This book, first published in 1984, looks at the way in which food grains still provided the overwhelming proportion of food intake in China. In common with other countries at a similar stage of economic development, there was a marked rise in the demand for food grain, and consequent difficulties in ensuring a sufficient increase in supply. This book, written by the late Kenneth R. Walker, analyses how the Chinese Government through central planning attempted to supply its vast, rapidly growing population with adequate grain, from 1953 to 1980. The book provides provincial estimates of grain production, procurement and consumption and assesses the impact which redistribution had on consumption. It concludes by examining why, with higher grain output per head in the period 1978–1980 than in the 1950s, China continued to import large quantities of grain and why the policy of transferring grain internally seemed no longer viable.

List of tables
List of figures
Preface
List of abbreviations
1. The nature of China's grain problem in the 1950s
2. Grain distribution under state planning, 1953–1957
3. Inter-provincial grain transfers, 1953–1957
4. Grain consumption, 1953–1957
5. Grain production and distribution, 1958–1962: the impact of the Great Leap Forward
6. Concluding remarks: grain production and distribution in the late 1970s
Appendices
Index of names
General index.

Subject Areas: Development economics & emerging economies [KCM]