Identification and evaluation of risk factors related to provincial food insecurity in China

Abstract

Understanding the risk factors which could cause provincial food insecurity is of great importance for maintaining China’s food security. In this research, fault-tree analysis has been used to identify risk sources and corresponding risk factors, and both the ratio and growth rate analysis method and the risk coefficient method have been used to evaluate the risk profile for each province. The results showed that constrained land resources and natural disasters were the most common risk factors and agricultural machinery inputs were the least frequent risk factor across all provinces. Fertilizer inputs were no longer a risk in 16 high-yielding provinces. Among natural disaster risks, floods mainly occurred in the eastern, northeastern, central, southern, and southwestern regions, with droughts predominately located in the northern, northeastern, western, and southwestern regions. Overall, natural disasters in major grain-producing provinces were much more serious than in other provinces. Methodical construction of agricultural infrastructure and building of early warning systems for natural disasters should be proposed to reduce losses due to natural disasters and policies on fertilizer application should shift from actively encouraging more use to controlling excess application. Those provinces that now are able to fulfill their food-security mandates should shift their focus to resource and environmental sustainability.

Keywords:

• fault-tree analysis
• gray correlation degree
• food insecurity
• risk factors
• risk coefficient

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 41130526). Mr Xiaoxing Qi is a Ph.D. candidate at China Agricultural University and Stanford University with financial support provided by the Chinese Scholarship Council.