Integrating Agricultural Diversification in China’s Major Policies for Sustainable and Resilient Crop Production
Abstract Agricultural diversification of intensified farming systems is being proposed as a solution for achieving both food security and agricultural sustainability, but so far there has been little implementation of such policy at a larger scale. In China, major policies promote the “High-standard farmland consolidation” (HSFC) strategy to improve productivity and reduce environmental degradation in the world’s largest food production areas by simplifying instead of diversifying landscapes on large instead of small fields. As China’s Central government is asking for scientific innovations to improve its sustainable development strategy, we argue that China can become a role model to integrate agricultural diversification in its major policies, if HSFC builds on five decades of diversification research to achieve the national food security and sustainable development goals. We use text mining to analyze the past 17 years of China’s most important agricultural policy, the No. 1 Central Documents (1CD) policy and show that agricultural diversification at the field and supply chain level has received limited attention. Based on global synthesis studies covering five decades of research, we provide practical recommendations of how to integrate agricultural diversification in the China’s major policies from the national (the National 5-Year Plan and 1CD) to the provincial level. We use the major agricultural commodities rice, tea, wheat, and rapeseed in Zhejiang province as a case study to discuss how diversification can help to reach China’s sustainable agriculture targets. Diversification of China’s major food production areas on small fields could be an important example globally of how scientific progress informs policy and facilitates the food system transition.