Quantifying China's Carrying Capacity: Using Optimization to Explore the Limits of Food Production under Water Constraints and Changing Diets
Abstract
Feeding the world's growing population in an environmentally sustainable way is a complex social and engineering challenge. In this work, we develop a novel method for assessing the number of people that can be fed sustainably in a particular region for given natural resources and diet (the carrying capacity). A quantitative assessment of carrying capacity provides insight into the food security of the study region as well as the stress on the environmental system; in addition, this methodology can be used to assess the potential carrying capacity under a variety of policy interventions, such as increasing yields, changing diets, or expanding irrigation infrastructure. The carrying capacity assessment uses optimization methods that finds the cropping pattern that maximizes population, subject to land, water, and diet constraints, considering a range of rainfed and irrigated crops.
Our carrying capacity methodology is illustrated with a case study of food security in China. China has historically been mostly food self-sufficient, although its food imports have been increasing since the year 2000. We find that the population in China was well below the country's carrying capacity in the year 2000 given the diet and yields in that year. However, the population's changing diet - especially the growing preference for meat - is exacting a growing toll on land and water resources. We find that under a more recent diet (2013), China is not likely to be food self-sufficient, even with major investments in irrigated agriculture without substantial increases in crop yield.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H13M1937S
- Keywords:
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- 1803 Anthropogenic effects;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1834 Human impacts;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 6334 Regional planning;
- POLICY SCIENCES