China_sPotentialofGra_省略_lizationinRecen.pdf

Chin. Geogra. Sci. 2009 19(2) 097–103 DOI: 10.1007/s11769-009-0103-x Received date: 2008-10-06; accepted date: 2009-02-10 Foundation item: Under the auspices of National Key Technologies RD Program of China (No. 2006BAB15B02), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. Corresponding author: XIN Liangjie. E-mail: xinlj.05b@ China’s Potential of Grain Production Due to Changes in Agricultural Land Utilization in Recent Years XIN Liangjie, LI Xiubin, ZHU Huiyi, TAN Minghong (Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China) Abstract: The changes in utilization of agricultural land have gradually grown into one of the major factors impacting grain output in China. This study explores the various components of agricultural production in China from the land utilization perspective, involving changes in grain production per unit area, multi-cropping index, and adjustment of agricultural structure. Compared with the record values, different research methodologies are used to analyze the po- tential of above three components. The results indicate that grain production potential of 65.68×109kg was unexploited in 2006, in which 45.8×109kg came from the restructuring in agriculture. So we can infer that the reduction of grain production in China could be primarily attributed to agricultural restructuring in recent years. So the productive poten- tial can be fully restored by increasing agricultural investment, or recovering agricultural structure in favorable condi- tions. So we can say that China’s current condition of food security is good. Keywords: grain production; potential of grain production; agricultural land utilization changes; multi-cropping index; reduction of grain product; food security 1 Introduction Grain production and food security are always generally interesting problems for governments and academ