April 22, 2009

China has said it won't join the growing trend of outsourcing food production by investing in overseas farmland, particularly in Africa, expressing doubts that such deals could improve its food security, the Financial Times reports on its Web site.

Niu Dun, China's deputy agriculture minister, said Beijing preferred to depend on its own land to maintain self-sufficiency in grain, distancing the country from nations such as Saudi Arabia and South Korea, which are investing in land overseas.

"We cannot rely on (investments in) other countries for our own food security," Niu told the Financial Times in an interview at the Group of Eight's first meeting on agriculture in Italy. "We have to depend on ourselves," he said in the first comments on the subject by a senior Chinese policymaker.