Research of food security in Xiamen under the background of arable land loss and COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract The outbreak and spreading of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide slowed down the agricultural and industrial production. Related lockdown or restriction caused problems in logistics and food supply globally, resulted in rising of food prices worldwide and threats to food security. China got through long period of rapid urbanization in period of 1990–2020, and large number of arable land has been occupied as built-up land. This situation brought potential food security threats, such as food supply reduction, food self-sufficiency difficulties in special regions, special period. This research takes Xiamen, a coastal city with rapid urbanization in China, as the research area, analyzed its dynamic changes of land use and per capita crops production for years. In addition, food availability like the import with export also got analyzed, as well as food price under the background of COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that the increase of built-up land in Xiamen is the largest, followed by decrease of arable land. Large proportion of arable land has been converted into built-up land from 1989 to 2018. The decrease of arable land and increase of population due to rapid urbanization lead to the decrease of per capita crops production to 6kg in 2018, which is only 1% of China’s average level. By comparison of per capita crops production in different regions and the change of China’s crops import and export, it is found that there is a significant contradiction between the urbanization ratio and food security in Xiamen, and it is difficult for Xiamen to obtain food input from regions nearby for long-term. Especially, not only the global food price index but also the food price in whole China continue rise up during period of COVID-19 pandemic right now. Thus, Xiamen needs to take multiple measures and policy interventions to ensure a certain degree of food self-sufficiency, and protect the basic arable land as well.