This article studies Chinese central government policies in relation to food market building and food security between 1979 and 2008. It investigates major changes in the state's grain purchase pricing, urban subsidized food sales and the state monopoly over rural-to-urban food circulation that were effected in an attempt to ensure both food availability and accessibility under fiscal constraint. By observing the gradual transition from state monopoly to the market, this article traces the mechanisms which enabled the Chinese government to both establish a monopsony by generating artificial price signals for farmers to generate food output, and act as a monopolistic seller by providing subsidized low-priced food to urban consumers in order to fulfil its goal of low-cost industrialization. Thus, China's food security largely hinged on the government's budget to subsidize the price gap. The Chinese government juggled between food security and fiscal affordability to formulate a food budget that would neither excessively impact food security nor cause a crisis to government finance. China's food security puzzle was eventually worked out in the mid-2000s with the boosting of national income, which enhanced the population's access to food and eased the central government's food security concerns.

Foodshed analysis provides a way to assess the capacity of regions to feed themselves. While dozens of foodshed analyses have been completed across North America, they have not been systematically analyzed. This paper reviews 22 foodshed analyses completed in the USA and Canada between 2000 and 2013. The criteria used to evaluate the foodshed studies are authorship/type of publication, spatial extent, goals and questions, methods and data sources for assessing consumption and production, analysis of pathways from production to consumption and findings. Similarities and differences, along with strengths and weaknesses, are identified. Together, the foodshed studies indicate significant opportunity for food system relocalization across North America. Foodshed studies are a potentially powerful tool for policy analysis and planning. A future research agenda for foodshed studies is identified, including addressing data gaps and establishing more standardized models for evaluating production, consumption and pathways.