Abstract:

Relying on its special geographical advantages, China has established a continental agricultural country. Chinese land area was nearly 10 million square kilometers, while its population had never exceeded 80 million from the Qin and Han Dynasties to the Ming Dynasty, so known as “a vast territory with abundant resources”. However, during the Qianlong period in the 19th century, its population suddenly increased to 400 million, and the land area was already insufficient. In the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the population reached 650 million, and further reached 1.41 billion in 2020 based on The Seventh Census. The per capita water and soil resources are only about 1/3 to 1/4 of the world level, which making it a resource-poor country. It is not easy to obtain enough food and even more difficult to achieve a moderately prosperous lifestyle relying solely on domestic resources. The shortage of water and soil resources is an urgent problem despite the huge potential for technological innovation. In nearly a century and a half, the historical tragedy of the collision between China’s agricultural civilization and the world’s industrial civilization has reminded us to break through the mentality of “domestic is the world” fostered by land-based agriculture and to set sail to the sea. China needs to transform from “self-sufficient” mainland agriculture to “shared supply and common sustenance” cross-sea agriculture, establishing itself as the main base, utilizing the world’s agricultural resources, and building world agriculture. It is an urgent need to set up a long-term national policy in order to transform mainland agriculture into cross-sea agriculture, to build a global agricultural database in order to respond to the demand of the international food market, to adjust accurately and timely the domestic agricultural structure in order to reduce international trade risks, and to make a global strategic deployment as soon as possible for China’s agriculture.

Key words: cross-sea agriculture, continental agriculture, global agriculture