By lack of water China might increase their cereals imports

Asia -the most populated continent of the world- suffers the consequences of the earth resources overexploitation. A clear example of it is what happens with the underground waters and the China Rivers that irrigate good part of the agricultural lands. Those sources of water present a process of exhaustion that put in danger the agricultural production and might obey at China to increase their imports of food, specifically grains, since might be not able to satisfy their population's demand. This phenomenon already was observed in the Chinese society and was one of the reasons that motivated in 1995 the exports reduction of grains toward North Korea. When China interrupted the sale of grains to North Korea this country didn't have another alternative but requesting international help to the United Nations.

A restitution of the help in foods to North Korea by China seems not very probable since this country continues confronting serious production problems derived of the shortage of the most important inputs for the agricultural production as the water. An example is what happens in the Yellow River that had lost their flow and already doesn't reach the sea. In the year 1996 the River was dry during 133 days while in 1997 remained dry during 226 days. The County of Shandong is the last route of the river before arriving to the sea. This county produces good part of the corn and of the wheat and it has been seriously affected as consequence of the river drought.

What happens with the Yellow River also passes with other important rivers of China and with the more and more scarce underground sources of water. It is considered that China has around of 50,000 kilometers of rivers of certain magnitude and 80% of them are degraded and are not capable for the fishing, due to the contamination that receives. The Yellow River, for example, is polluted of heavy metals and other toxic matters that impede its use for human consumption and irrigation in good part of its route.

The decrease of the China capacity for producing foods will generate an important impact in the world economy, since will look those foods in the international markets causing the increase of its prices. The poor’s countries are not in capacity of resisting an increment in the price of the foods, they would not have how to pay the new prices and, in consequence, they would be in front of a true problem of survival. If the countries with more population as China and India diminish their foods production capacity, the world situation will be aggravated. India, the other giant of the world suffers a similar situation and should use very important part of the energy that produce to pump water of the underground.

World experts estimated that China would have enough water for few years more; this means that would have to import a good parte of their necessities of cereals. If this happen, the impact for the politics and the world economy would be very important.