Changing grain production in China: Perspective on changing grain acreage

The consecutive growth in China's grain output over the past decade has partly depended on the expansion in grain sown area. The paper examines spatiotemporal patterns of China's grain sown area by using a complete decomposition approach. The results show that changing grain sown area during 1978-2012 is the product of augmenting multiple cropping index (MCI), shrinking share of grain crops and loss of cultivated land on the whole. Owing much to augmenting MCI, grain acreage has expanded mainly in the high latitude areas since the mid-1990s, while it has shrunk in the eastern and central parts of China. A shift in growing grain crops from south to north can thus be discerned, affecting China's grain production pattern. Pattern change in grain sown area, associated with declining cultivated land and regional variability in changing MCI, is then discussed for the sake of China's grain supply security.