Beijing Suggests China’s Farmers Stay At Home

We noted earlier this year that Chinese farmers were looking to till African and Latin American soil, with a couple of examples of groups of Chinese families farming on those continents and exporting back to China. Now Niu Dun, China’s deputy agriculture minister, is distancing Beijing from such efforts, saying that China wants to depend on its own land to ensure its food security. Perhaps not uncoincidentally Niu’s comments come ahead of a World Bank code of conduct for investing in overseas farmland expected in May, itself ahead of a July UN Food and Agriculture conference on the issue pencilled in for July.