China's push for food security

China is increasingly pushing for food security and self-sufficiency, and this has been widely reported by the media – see this Bloomberg article and this SCMP article.

Geopolitics certainly play an important part, especially in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war. But China's struggle with an ever-growing appetite for grains and oilseeds pre-dates the Russia-Ukraine war: China ranked 34th out of 113 countries in the 2021 Global Food Security Index, which measures food affordability, availability, quality and safety, and natural resources and resilience.