INTRODUCTION

Agriculture in the suburbs of Shanghai has faced the same demands for food and raw materials as in other areas of China. However, the peculiarly symbiotic nature of economic relations between city and suburbs has made the search for agricultural self-sufficiency particularly pressing. This was presumably one of the factors underlying the decision to extend Shanghai's boundaries in 1958. The incorporation of a large and rich agricultural area would reduce external dependence for basic commodities and, by increasing the municipal authorities' control over agricultural production, supply and distribution, facilitate planning.

With this in mind, the question I have tried to answer in this paper is: ‘How far have the suburbs succeeded in meeting Shanghai's agricultural needs in the years since 1949? Originally, I hoped to approach this by considering the relationship between suburban agriculture in all its aspects and total demand. It would have involved an investigation of the production and consumption not only of all basic and supplementary foods, but also of industrial crops, such as cotton. However, so much material has emerged in the course of preparatory research that, for reasons of space, I have been forced to adopt a more modest objective. As it now stands, the analysis is largely limited to an examination of the basic question as it has affected just two crops: food grains and vegetables. Some consideration is given to supplies of other foodstuffs and to the production of the principal economic crop, cotton, but this is mainly determined by the light it can throw on the central analysis.