China's Ministry of Agriculture has introduced a plan to convert farmland planted in corn to other crops in order to alleviate a massive surplus and mitigate the environmental damage caused by planting corn in environmentally-fragile regions. The targeted area for conversion to other crops is equal to approximately 9 percent of current corn area.

On November 2, the Ministry issued a document that prescribes an elaborate "corn structural adjustment" program to reduce corn production in environmentally fragile cold, arid, mountainous, and eroded areas on the fringes of the country's corn cultivation region. This "sickle region" encompasses the northeastern provinces, parts of northern China with falling water tables, mountainous areas of north central China, the deserts and grasslands of northwestern China, and mountainous and rocky areas of the southwestern provinces. This region is described as having low yields vulnerable to drought. It lacks irrigation facilities and has a "fragile agricultural ecology." According to the Ministry's document, the "sickle" region does not have a comparative advantage in corn.
The plan calls for cutting back on corn area planted in the "sickle" region by 50 million mu or more (3.33 million hectares) to reach a stable area of 100 million mu (6.67 million hectares) in the region by 2020. The reduction in corn area is equal to about 9 percent of China's current area planted in corn nationwide. The area taken out of production has relatively low yields, so the impact on corn output would be less. Assuming the yield is about 4 to 5 metric tons per hectare on 3.33 million hectares of land removed from production, the decline in production would be about 6-7 percent of current production. The plan indicates that this loss of corn will be partially offset by increased yields in the "core" corn production regions where production capacity will be increased to maintain "food security."

The new plan calls for a legion of local officials to scurry out to the countryside to undo an economic and ecological disaster created by short-sighted self-sufficiency policies. A 70-percent increase in corn prices from 2003 to 2012 prompted an increase in corn-planting of 13-million-hectares--a 60-percent increase--that made corn the leading crop produced in China. This was helped along by cash subsidies for grain producers that began in 2004. In documents describing campaigns to boost alfalfa production, officials casually observe that farmers in arid northwestern provinces abandoned alfalfa when the government began giving out subsidies to grain producers. In fact, one of the objectives of the current campaign is to induce farmers to switch from corn to alfalfa.

Much like the U.S. dust bowl phenomenon in the 1930s, Chinese farmers responded to unusually high prices by plowing up grasslands, deserts, mountainsides, and marshes to plant corn in every nook and cranny they could find. Now, according to the Ministry of Agriculture document, China has a massive surplus of corn--the latest forecast is that the government will have to sop up about a fourth of the 2015 harvest--and severe erosion, desertification, degraded grassland, and saline farmland. 

Like nearly all Chinese plans, the corn structural adjustment plan has multiple objectives, is unwieldy and filled with contradictions. The Ministry of Agriculture appeals to local officials to adopt a sense of "responsibility" and "urgency" to carry out the structural adjustment program, but it also insists that the corn surplus is only a temporary phenomenon. The Ministry insists that there is no need to reduce corn production in the "core" production regions where corn has a "comparative advantage." The corn adjustment plan calls for strengthening production capacity in these core regions (the core regions are not identified in this plan) in order "to maintain basic self-sufficiency in cereal grains." The document warns officials to have a long-term perspective, recognizing that growth of the livestock industry will continue to increase demand for corn as a feed grain.