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A traveller's view of food production in China

By Fay Helwig - posted Thursday, 12 June 2008


Historically China has experienced both natural and man made famines. Like country people everywhere, if seasons are benevolent the rural people of China are capable of feeding their families and growing extra food for sale.

I have made four independent trips into China during the past six years. As an Australian primary producer, my attention has been attracted by sights I didn’t understand, which then led me to seek answers.

One matter of interest is the growing use of potatoes as a high energy food. We know that potatoes became a staple food when introduced into Ireland and Germany, but how many of us are aware of their prominence in the diet of the Chinese people?

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Why is this? Potatoes grow well in many climates and soil types. They do require considerable water and a nitrogenous fertiliser. Anyone who visits rural areas of Germany in the spring may be appalled at the stink of man and animal sewerage. This is stored over winter and sprayed onto the fields as a form of rich nitrogenous fertiliser as the snow melts. China is no different - rural areas utilise such natural fertilisers.

During May 2007 I spent time in the Yunnan Province of south-western China. The capital, Kunming, is situated on the Tropic of Cancer. Three great rivers run parallel to each other through steep mountains as they depart Tibet before turning in their own direction. They are the Salween, Mekong and Yangzte. The two western rivers flow into Burma and Vietnam. The Yangzte forms a bend to flow north to become the mother river of China.

The western part of Yunnan is mountainous. This province has great variation in regional climates from tropical to alpine. Unique to this province are the range of ethnic minority groups which seem to have flourished over many centuries due to the ability of the region to produce abundant food.

May is the last month of spring in Yunnan prior to the onset of summer rains. Near the first bend of the Yangzte River farmers were harvesting small paddy fields of barley and potatoes in the traditional manner. Oxen were ploughing the ground and other fields were flooded for rice.

South past the bend and further into the Three Rivers region many hectares, beside lesser streams, had already been harvested and were freshly planted with corn and tobacco. Although these fields are intensively cultivated, growing two crops a year, all nutrients are returned to the soil and there would appear to be a rotation between grain, root and leafy vegetable crops.

These crops were not flood irrigated. The ground was hilled in rows and covered with polythene sheeting to prevent weed germination and moisture evaporation. I saw people walking along these rows, carrying a bucket and watering individual plants with a cup. It was likely that the annual rains would begin within two weeks and they would no longer have to undertake this task.

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China is the largest producer of tobacco in the world. Traditionally the Chinese government has highly valued the tobacco industry. Export earnings are steadily increasing and are worth about US$120 million a year. In February 2006, the State Department of China issued orders to abolish specific types of agricultural taxation, one form of which applied to tobacco leaves, thus removing the taxation burden from farmers. This action resulted in farmers placing more land under tobacco production.

The greatest problem facing Chinese farmers would appear to be the same problem afflicting many Western countries - the drift of their young people to the cities.

I will digress from the food issue to this particular social situation. Like all Chinese people these farming families have respected the value of education. They have struggled financially to ensure that their sons and daughters received a high school education, as matriculation ensured them of a better paid job or entrance to a university. As a result, they have lost the next generation of farm workers.

Their children prefer the less onerous city life. They marry, have a child and send the child home to the father’s parents to be reared. These elderly grandparents recognise that if they again educate the child and allow him or her to finish high school they will lose the next generation and thus deprive themselves of any assistance in their aged years. Without the labour of those grandchildren they will drop into poverty and lose their land when they become unable to work their farms. Thus many rural children are kept in bondage by their grandparents.

Potatoes are a valuable source of energy, but importantly store well for long periods of time. In 1996 I entered into discussions with Dr Jimmy Botella, then Professor in charge of the Genetic Engineering Department at the Queensland University at St Lucia, Brisbane. He told me that much of his department’s work was financed by Malaysia, because the greatest problem facing Asian countries isn’t a shortage of food. The greatest difficulty in these regions is the ability to preserve foods without the refrigeration available in the developed nations.

He maintained that 80 per cent of Asian fruit and vegetables perished before reaching the meal table. His genetic research was aimed at extending the lifetime of products with the introduction of a “long life” gene so that they wouldn’t rot quickly.

Further north in the Shangrila valley, where the climate is considerably colder, the population rely on meat and milk from cattle or yaks. They grow barley and potatoes as their staple foods and to feed livestock including pigs, which are allowed free grazing throughout the warmer months. Here they are only able to grow one crop a year. At the end of May these crops were emerging from the soil. I would consider that regions such as this are particularly vulnerable to a disease-caused famine, as in the instance of Ireland’s former reliance on the potato as a staple food.

In May 2008 I was planning to spend two weeks in Sichuan Province, which is situated in western China, directly above Yunnan Province and abutting Tibet. Of particular interest to me is the Dujiangyan Irrigation Project 56km west of Chengdu, the provincial capital.

Since ancient times the Minjiang River had surged down from the mountains flooding the plains and silting the water courses. About 250BC the governor of the province directed the construction of Dujianyan. He employed a new method of channelling and dividing the water to harness the Minjiang River. He accomplished this by separating the project in to two main parts: the head work and the irrigation system. Since then, the Chengdu Plain has been free of flooding and the people have lived peacefully and affluently. The project is now honoured as the “Treasure of Sichuan”.

Sichuan is known for its pig industry. Last year the province raised 68.4 million pigs, accounting for one-ninth of all pigs raised across the country.

Provinces such as Sichuan have an abundance of food stuffs, but due to the rising incomes of the urban Chinese people there is growing consumption of meat. Increasingly, grain is diverted to protein production, especially the feeding of pigs. This intensive farming of pigs, many of which live in close proximity to their owners, has formerly led to outbreaks of swine fever. Not only can such diseases result in human contagion, they create the twin fears of epidemics affecting the wider population, and the possible loss of millions of pigs as a potential food source.

Since I wrote these words Sichuan Province experienced a massive earthquake and I had to cancel my visit to the region.

Reports from within China indicate that there will not be much disruption to farm production across the Sichuan Basin, because that region has a solid rock base. The huge areas of devastation were on the western, mountainous regions of Sichuan. Thus I consider it unlikely that the earthquake will have much impact on rice production in Sichuan.

Unable to visit Sichuan Province I travelled instead to Guangxi Province. Within China, rice is mainly produced in Sichuan, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Guangxi and Hubei. China was once an exporter of rice. Now it has begun to import rice although Guangxi remains a leading exporter of hybrid rice seed to other Asian countries.

Travelling in Guangxi I noted that farmers in some regions who had traditionally grown rice have, within the past five years, put many fields under permanent plantings of table grapes and fruiting trees. Increasing areas, which formerly grew rice, are planted with strawberries, climbing beans and peanuts.

It was obvious to me that the demands of an improving living standard among urban Chinese, no longer able to produce food from garden plots, has led to rising prices for fruit and vegetables. This in turn has meant that the farmers have realised they can achieve higher incomes growing these products, not rice.

To grow these new crops the soil within the former rice paddy is hilled into rows or mounds allowing the ground to be temporarily flooded for the purpose of irrigating these deep rooted plants and then drained. These crops require less water for the purpose of irrigation than a rice crop.

Ground cover crops, such as peanuts are frequently planted beneath the young citrus trees until about their fourth year when the leaf canopy shades the soil. This enables the farmer to continue earning income from the field until he is able to realise a profit from oranges. Most of the oranges are sold directly to wholesalers, who then take them to the cities for distribution.

While it is possible to rotate rice fields with alternative crops of beans, corn, peanuts and strawberries, once these fields are planted with fruiting  trees they have been withdrawn from rice production until such time as rice becomes a more valuable commodity than fruit.

Another crop which occupies former rice land is young trees later intended to be transplanted along streets. Chinese cities are making a concerted effort to green their appearance with colourful clipped hedges and closely planted trees.

The young trees, with stems no thicker than pencils, are planted thickly in former rice paddies. They are placed in close proximity to each other, thus encouraging them to grow tall and straight without developing side branches. When the trees have reached the desired height, one to two metres tall, they are root balled and transplanted into permanent positions beside rural roads, highways and city streets. China is much greener than many Westerners expect it to be.

China was once an exporter of rice. Now it has begun to import rice. Australia has been producing as much as 40 billion tons of rice and feeding 60 million people through the world via the export of this grain. Due to the lack of irrigation water in the Murray-Darling Basin in this past year, Australia was only able to export two billion tons of rice. Australia has the potential to grow more rice in northern Australia, although there will be management difficulties to overcome. China could divert tobacco growing country to corn production.

China’s intransigence concerning Tibet is suspected to be largely motivated by plans to divert water from the Himalayan source of rivers that presently flow into India, and send it north into arid regions of China where ground water supplies are rapidly being depleted.

I predict that rice will become increasingly expensive in China and, as always, it will be the poorest people who will suffer as rice remains their staple diet. Rice has become no more than a side dish on the tables of many affluent Chinese.

If China is able to continue raising the living standard of the population and solves the problem of insufficient water in some regions, I anticipate that China will be able to feed its population subject to any major climate change. Again subject to the same condition, I believe Australia can feed its population and continue to export considerable quantities of food to other nations. The real issue is poverty in countries other than China and Australia.

The question remains, how will the hungry multitudes of the future be able to afford to purchase food?

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About the Author

Fay Helwig is a primary producer and operates bed and breakfast accommodation in South East Queensland's Granite Belt. She is author of Wildflowers, wilderness and wine.

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