|
| The International Vegetable Fair in Shandong Province. China is emerging as a produce powerhouse. |
Chinese Food I visited the coastal provinces of mainland China in May 2005 to study the country's rapidly changing
food economy. The big export scandals were still several years off, and Chinese agricultural officials were eager to show
me the rapidly modernizing food system, from meat processing plants to wheat and vegetable farming. As we traveled from one
booming farm city to the next, local officials and businessmen took me to their factories and laboratories and let me see
first hand how the world’s most populous country nation is coping with the transformation of the national diet.
| To market, to market |
|
| Chinese are eating more meat--including half the world's pork--but demand is hurting grain supplies |
With rising incomes
and more efficient farms, Chinese are eating more like Western consumers—more meat and dairy and more processed foods.
This new diet has improved nutritional standards--the rates of stunting are falling rapidly—but it's also having
negative effects. Some one hundred million Chinese are now overweight. More seriously, rising meat consumption has pushed
up demand for feed grains. But where the Chinese central government could once tell Chinese farmers exactly what to grow,
Beijing relaxed that iron-grip policy in the 1980s in order to encourage farmers to be more productive. Unfortunately, while
China’s newly entrepreneurial farmers are more productive, they're also more self-serving and have been abandoning
grain crops, which have low margins (and need lots of fertilizers and water) in favor of raising more profitable vegetables
and fruit.
| The new face of Chinese Agriculture |
|
| Like many Chinese farmers, Ren Quing Hun traded grain farming for produce |
This
shift is making individual farmers and local governments rich, but it is also reducing China's overall grain supplies
and has forced the country to give up its cherished policy of food self-sufficiency and start importing. China's emergence
as a net grain importer has helped drive up prices of corn, wheat, and other cereals to record levels--and has raised questions
about the long-term adequacy of global supplies.
| Hand-crafted wheat in Anhui Province |
|
| Farm tractors are rare, and most farmers still hand-spray their crops |
| Making Every Inch Count |
|
| Farmland is so scarce in China that this farmer has planted wheat between his greenhouses. |
| The Next Napa |
|
| A grape research specialist tests new varieties for China's booming wine sector. |
| Fragmented Farm Scape |
|
| Because Chinese farm land is divided among all a family's children, farms are now average 2.5 acres. |
|
|
