BEIJING: The fear of failing to grow enough corn, wheat or rice to feed its people has spurred China into action this year, but Beijing may be doing too little, too late to overcome the powerful forces of urbanization. Just as global grain markets grapple with ultralow stocks and record-high prices, China is battling to stem the destruction of its arable land due to urban sprawl, the growing scarcity of water and the exodus of labor to its booming cities by directing tens of billions of dollars to rural areas. But it needs to do much more to counter the impact of the greatest urbanization in history, analysts say. "The subsidies are still very low," said Li Guoxiang, a researcher with the Rural Development Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the top government research organization on rural policies. He said direct subsidies accounted only for about 5 percent of farmers' income in China - well below the 60 percent in some developed countries, like the United States or Japan. With 20 percent of the world's population but only 7 percent of the planet's farmland, China has done well to grow enough rice, corn and wheat to feed its people. But with diets improving, and meat and dairy consumption rising, those days are ending, possibly faster than many expect, adding to growing global unease over future food supplies. Beijing has pledged to keep at least 120 million hectares, or 300 million acres, of arable land. But it says it may have less than that because of illegal land use, the minister of land and resources, Xu Shaoshi, said in July last year. China has already lost about 1 percent of its agricultural land - the equivalent of Holland and Belgium combined - every year for the past eight years, said Fr