Identification of food security in the mountainous Guyuan Prefecture of China by exploring changes of food production

Mountainous regions are often affected by food shortages due to the adverse natural environmental conditions, inconvenient transportation and social marginalization, and the food security in these areas has become the focus of the academic community. Guyuan Prefecture is an environmentally fragile, mountainous region in western China. Although food production has increased steadily over the past four decades, 21.4% of the households in Guyuan Prefecture still suffered food shortages in 2008, the food insecurity has become more severe in this region in recent years. The goal of this study is to identify the key factors affecting food security between 1981 and 2005 and to provide some recommendations for improving food security. The panel model was used to analyze the significance and intensity of the primary factors influencing food production in this study. We identified the status of food security by examining the grain production per capita. Our results show that poor environmental conditions and population pressure are the major factors influencing food production in Guyuan. Food security might be improved if more fund and technology were invested in the fields of transportation and irrigation. Besides, climate change has a positive impact on food production, the increase in temperature tends to alleviate food insecurity. In addition, infrastructure construction in the agricultural sector should be strengthened and the population growth should be controlled in Guyuan Prefecture.