the story, by nathan halverson, begins in henan province, the "breadbasket of china." >> reporter: li grows crops on a few acres of land about 300 miles south of beijing. farmers like li produce the bulk of china's food. >> ( translated ): it has been the same way-- wheat in the spring and corn in the fall. always this way. it has never changed. ( laughs ) >> reporter: but change is coming. farmers like li can no longer produce enough food to satisfy china's growing demand. the country is in the midst of the largest agrarian reforms in world history. >> china is roughly the same size as the united states. the cropland area is similar. the grain harvest is similar. the difference is, in the u.s., we have 300 million people, and there they have 1.4 billion people. >> reporter: lester brown is a food economist and author of "who will feed china?" he says china must now make the most of its limited farmland. >> and they're feeling very vulnerable at this point. they know that they can't feed themselves anymore. >> reporter: that fear has rattled the chinese government. in 2011, it announc

nathan halverson from the center for investigative reporting looked into the chinese government's rolethe takeover. this story was produced as part of the food for nine billion series, a collaboration between the center for investigative reporting and homelands productions with broadcast partners, the p.b.s. newshour, american public media's "marketplace" and p.r.i.'s "the world." >> reporter: pork pride is everywhere in smithfield, virginia. this small town of 8,000 dubs itself "the ham capital of the world." painted pigs line main street. and, at the "taste of smithfield cafe," bacon graces nearly every dish. the town's museum even features the world's oldest edible ham. and some in town still produce ham as it was done generations ago. >> we are curing ham the same way it was done during colonial times. jamestown, williamsburg, right on up to now. >> reporter: the town is also home to the world's largest pork producer, smithfield foods. this factory processes more than 10,000 pigs a day. >> we've got boneless loins, bone-in loins, butts, back-ribs, spareribs, neck-bone, cushions, we