World Grain - June 2014 - 8

FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Urbanization sways
future of food

f the many geopolitical, cultural and
economic forces that drive demand
for food, often causing broad changes
that impact grain milling, hardly any is more
important than expanding urbanization.
Even in America, where the grand movements of people from rural to urban settings
may appear to have run their course, shifts
still are occurring as different locations favored by various ethnic populations cause
fluctuations in consumer demand for specific foods. It is mainly the developing nations of Africa, Asia and South and Central
America that have large population, as much
as half, still residing in rural areas. Most of
these people are primarily engaged in sustenance agriculture, in turn having little or no
influence on commercial grain-based food
demand. These are areas where changes are
likely in the near future.
Weighing how future surges in urbanization will affect the unfolding of the food
industry in these countries is essential to
appraising the future of the grain business.
That is especially the case if the prospective
urbanization has sufficient power to prompt
major changes in the structure of the global
food industry, in manufacturing as well as
retail distribution.
It is no surprise that China has captured
the lead in people moving by announcing a
dramatic program to relocate millions from
rural settings where they have mainly been
engaged in basic farming to established as
well as new urban centers. This is the first
time that China, or indeed any nation, has
ever announced such a formally coordinated
program aimed at a people movement of this
dimension. In the past, urbanization, in China or in other nations reaching back to the
18th century when agriculture experienced
its first modernization and thus required less
labor, occurred in reaction to where jobs
vanished and new employment opened. The
new China program envisions 100 million
additional people being transferred from
rural areas to cities by 2020 along with improved living conditions for 100 million who
had previously moved into urban settings
that are not deemed desirable.

The current effort in China actually represents a cutback from a proposal made last
year that aimed at having 70% of the country's population of 1.4 billion people residing in cities by 2025. The new plan targets
60% living in cities by 2020, compared with
a current urban-dweller share of 54%. Dealing with a population well in excess of a
billion means that these numbers are huge,
especially as this is the first time that the
government has assumed responsibility for
designating from where rural dwellers will
be moved as well as their new location.
The plan emphasizes attention to the quality of life in cities, which certainly includes
food availability and distribution systems.
The plan's goal of better integration of former rural dwellers into urban lifestyles only
hints of the massive investments that the
government will be required to make for
improved roads and construction, for better schools and hospitals, and for expanded
local transportation systems. Huge infrastructure spending is promised by the new
plan to meet the target that every city with a
population of 500,000 and above will have
high-speed rail service and smaller cities
will have expressways.
Relating such ambitious urbanization plans
to China's grain industry matches well with
the broad belief expressed by Beijing that
urbanization is the same as modernization,
and that its implementation represents the nation's future. The plan itself underscores this
by pointing out that every developed nation
is urbanized and industrialized, a combination
that practically assures tremendous change in
the food industry. Considering that China is
only part way toward achieving these goals,
the path now being pursued is of consequence
for the global grain and food industry. After
all, moving as far as China has toward urbanization has radically transformed its food
system and has done much to change how the
global food system is structured. Hundreds
of millions of new consumers promise even
greater change.
Morton I. Sosland
Editor-in-chief

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World Grain - June 2014

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