China’s Overseas Farmland Investment:Choices Of Regions And Modes

As it enters the21st century, with the rapid population growth across the globe, changing climate, growing scarcity of water and land resources and development of biological energy industry, the imbalance between food supply and demand globally is getting increasingly severe and food prices internationally start to climb continuously. Especially after the food crisis in2007, grain price index stays at the high end and the possibility for another food crisis to occur has been enhanced significantly. With the increase of the amount of net imported food in China, the degree of food self-sufficiency starts to decrease greatly and begin to be below the95%national warning line for food security frequently. In2012, importations of the three main grain varieties-rice, wheat and corn-have all exceeded their exportations and the net importations had reached a historic1316.9ton, showing an increased reliability of China’s food security on external food markets. In the meantime, with the development of biological energy industry in countries and regions including America, the EU and Brazil, the link between international food market and energy as well as financial markets becomes closer. This means that the price risks faced by countries using international trade to ensure national food security become more prominent, therefore there are, to some extent, hidden troubles for China’s food security.With the expectation that food security globally continues to deteriorate, many big food import countries have chosen to use overseas farmland investment to ensure their food security. As the biggest developing country and the country with very scarce per capita farmland resources, China is definitely facing the same food security issue. Facing the trend of increasing intense competition for overseas farmland investment, the chaos participation of Chinese enterprises in overseas farmland investment activities and the ambiguous attitudes of the Chinese government, it is urgently needed to study whether it is reasonable and feasible for overseas farmland investment to ensure China’s food security. The thesis combines the methods of theoretical analysis and empirical studies, aims to ensure China’s food security and conducts research on overseas farmland investment as a way of ensuring food supply. There are three main conclusions:(1) China’s overseas farmland investment should be employed as a supplementary means to ensure its food supply. This dissertation focused on the researches of the domestic production, international trade and overseas farmland investment methods which guarantee China’s food supplyby using grey correlation model, granger causality test model and SWOT analysis model. Analyses of the domestic production methods show that farmland has been the significant element of physical inputs which restricts China’s grain production, and in the face of the severe situation of food security, the most safe and effective means of guaranteeing China’s food security is to break the constraints of the farmland resource on China’s grain production; Analyses of the international trade methods illustrate that the price risk of China’s taking advantage of the international food market to guarantee the domestic food supply is increasing, and the validity of international trade method is gradually weakening; Analyses of theoverseas farmland investment methodsdemonstrate that in the current environment at home and abroad, China has possessed the strength of active participation in the overseas farmland investment and in the context of the abundant existence of international farmland resource and the rapid expansion of overseas farmland investment, China’s overseas farmland investment should be employed as a supplementary means to ensure its food supply.(2) A group of target countries deserving for overseas farmland investment exist. This dissertation constructs the evaluation model by using the triangular whitenization weight function based on the central point and Delphi method as well as the evaluation system from the four aspects of the resource conditions, the production base, the macro environment and the investmentconditions to evaluate the overseas farmland investment potential of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the former Soviet Union and the developed countries with abundant farmland. The results show that countries with the greatest investment potential are as follows:7countries of Sudan, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique, Nigeria and Uganda in sub-Saharan Africa;4countries of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia in Latin America;3countries of Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan in the former Soviet Union;9countries of Australia, Canada, the United States, Spain, Denmark, France, Finland, Hungary and Poland in the developed countries with abundant farmland. The empirical research on China’s overseas farmland investment in this dissertationalso shows that those countries mentioned above are the important targets for Chinese enterprises to invest overseas farmland currently considering no matter the number of projects or the total area of investment.(3)The overseas farmland investment modes can be divided into department collaboration category and power control category and Chinese enterprises ought to adopt the investment mode strategically. This dissertation summarizes the modes and features of current overseas farmland investment applying the methods of literature and case analysis and then generalizes the modes of "public-public","public-private",.and "private-private" in department collaboration category and the modes of landright-occupying-completely, landright-occupying-partly and landright-controlling in power control category. Based on the comparisons of all the modes’features, this dissertation concludes that in the developing regions, the state-owned enterprises could focus on the "public-public" mode, the investment-led "public-private" mode, the landright-occupying-completely mode and the landright-occupying-partly mode and the private enterprises could focus on the "private-private"mode, the capital-attracting-led "public-private" mode, the landright-occupying-partly mode and the landright-controlling mode; in the developed regions, no matter the state-owned or the private enterprises could emphasize the "private-private" mode, the landright-occupying-completely mode and the landright-occupying-partly mode. The innovation of this dissertation reflects mainly in the following four aspects:(1)the unique research on overseas farmland investment is with a certain degree of originality;(2)the research on overseas farmland investment which is as a method to secure food supply enriches the corresponding studies of food security theories;(3)amplifying the farmland resource security issue of China to the world expands the research perspective of security theories on farmland resource;(4)the triangular whitenization weight function evaluation model based on the central point is improved.