China Agriculture systems Since a largely man-made famine that started in the late 1950s, in which tens of millions have died, China has defied the odds by feeding its people almost entirely on its own. With just a tenth of the world's arable land, it has fed one-fifth* of the world's population. As China's middle-class appetites rise, it will no longer be able to rely on its own farms. It overtook the United States as the world's biggest importer of agricultural goods in 2011. A picture from apiras.net/ A picture from nationalinterest.org/ However, China continues to believe that in order to avoid starvation, it must produce the majority, if not all, of its staple foods domestically rather than relying on volatile global markets, a conviction that has resulted in unsustainable food production practices. So, what is it about China's agricultural system that makes it inefficient? Farmers are highly subsidized in order to produce food that is easier to import from ot