Past models no guide to food future

This year, China will mark the 30th anniversary of the start of its reform. Taking a stock of the reform's experience is particularly important at a time of worldwide alarm of inflation, driven by industrial materials as well as farm products.

When Ban Ki-moon, United Nations secretary-general, called for the world to increase its food production by 50 percent between now and 2030 at the world food summit in Rome in early June, he might not have known which country had actually managed to raise its farm output by as much. China did that, if we compare its 2007 grain harvest with its record in 1978, the first year of the reform.

Back then, under the collective farming system, China was able to produce less than 305 million tons of grain for a whole year. With around 1 billion population, the per capita grain supply was only 300 kilograms.