How China can become self-sufficient ?
Back to Old & Secret Knowledge of Chinese Circular Economy
Despite its incredible economic development, China still has to import food. But recently in China re-emerged the idea of “Self-sufficiency Policy”. How to feed 1,5 billions people ? By using the traditional secrets of old Chinese know-how to produce food in a smart circular way. Before green contemporary « Circular economy » philosophy, ancient China learned to feed itself without invading other countries. Here what we can see from Sea and Land production in China from the eye of Google Earth !
FIRST PATRT: On the Land
Greenhouse cultivation and smart, connected farms
On Google Earth, we can see millions of “flash” cabins in the province of Shangdong. Look better, it turned out to be a vegetable and fruit greenhouse that controls temperature and humidity.
In the greenhouse, vegetables and fruits can be cultivated more than a year regardless of the season. This means that the output of vegetables and fruits is several times higher than traditional farmland.
For example, lettuce growing in a greenhouse takes 52 days from sowing to harvesting, so that seven rounds can be planted a year, which is 7 times more efficient.
In addition, farmers are also required to install IoT monitoring systems i. Through re-education and training, farmers learned to use mobile phones to monitor the internal environmental parameters of the greenhouse, such as carbon dioxide concentration, light intensity, soil temperature and so on.
According to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, China’s vegetable production and consumption are around 700 million tons, which is 40% of the world’s total. With greenhouse vegetables, Chinese people enjoy more varieties of vegetables than anywhere else in the world, and the prices are even cheaper.
Similar to vegetables, China’s output of all kinds of fruits except tropical fruits is almost the first in the world, far exceeding the second.
In Japan, a watermelon sells for about 2,000 yen (US$18). In China, it costs only 10 yuan (US$1.5) for a larger melon.
Lhasa, Tibet
The government asked Tibetans to build a lot of greenhouses on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The Tibetans were very happy planting tomatoes in the greenhouses, and they had less time to go to the temple, which made big monks feel unhappy !
Over the past decade, the price of Tibetan vegetables has fallen by 90%, so there is no need to ship it from neighboring provinces. Most Tibetans can finally afford watermelon.
You know, most Tibetans in history only eat yak beef, milk, dairy products and pasta !
Keli Dala, Yili, Xinjiang
Kokdala is a county-level city in northern Xinjiang, and to the west is the Almaty region of Kazakhstan. The yellow line below shows the border between China and Kazakhstan.
Obviously, there are more green farmlands on the Chinese side, and the Kazakhstan side is basically a wasteland.
In fact, the land here is very poor, the soil acidity is too high, the water resources are too little, and no crops can be planted. Can only count on the water that flows down when the glaciers on the snow mountain melt. For Kazakhstan, the cost of such a planting industry is too high, and the market itself is not large. So Kazakhstan decided not to grow anything at all.
On the Chinese side, all wasteland was cultivated by a special government organization, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. Now the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps has become a state-owned enterprise that has jurisdiction over 2.6 million employees and farmers, including Han and Uyghur people. Because of such a large scale, the marginal operating costs have decreased, and it is directly connected to the mainland market.
In order to save water resources and reduce agricultural costs, local Uyghurs and Kazakhs are trained to learn Chinese and the latest agricultural technology. Each village has party members to guide them how to farm scientifically.
The drip irrigation method can greatly reduce water consumption, thereby saving costs. With the help of native Israeli and Chinese technologies, Xinjiang’s wasteland has become fertile land for high yields.
Xinjiang Bayinguoleng Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture Hejing County
What are these red plots in the desert ? The tomato fields at huge scales ! When you eat pasta, Turkish barbecue or French fries, you may be eating Xinjiang tomatoes. Of course, it may not be directly imported from Xinjiang, but resell through the third country like honey.
China’s annual tomato production reaches 56.3 million tons, and exports account for 1/3 of the world. Of which 14 million tons came from Xinjiang.
Think about the Ketchup Heinz, for example.
This company are basically distributor of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and the Chinese government, and most of this profit is returned to farmers in Xinjiang.
In addition to tomatoes and peppers, China is also the world’s largest grape producing country, accounting for 19.1% of the world’s production. The best grapes come from Turpan, Xinjiang. Of course, the technique of making wine is really not very good !
Finally, talk about the main crops such as rice, wheat and corn. This is the most important food, because not only people want to eat, but also feed for poultry and livestock such as pigs, chickens, and cows.
China is generally the largest grain producer. But for a population of 1.4 billion, this amount is enough for people to “eat”, but there is still a long way to go before “eating well” and per capita food consumption reaching the level of developed countries in Europe and America.
At present, China’s arable land area is not enough to support 1.4 billion people to “eat well”, and with industrialization and urbanization, the arable land area is still decreasing.
Xingtai City, Hebei Province
How is China’s precious land resources used?
Let’s visit the North China Plain, which is where most of China’s crops are produced.
It can be seen that as more and more people earn money, they begin to build houses on the original farmland, and there will be fewer and fewer green fields. It is estimated that the area of arable land that China reduces every year is about 3000 square kilometers ! The farmland became white concrete. This will cause disaster for a long time, so the Chinese government is trying to control and regulate the use of land. However, the momentum of this “urbanization” is huge, and it is very difficult to manage.
Qingyang City, Gansu Province
Since the Mao Zedong era, the Communist Party of China has organized masses to reclaim mountains. There are too many examples. Take the Loess Plateau as an example.
The 640,000 square kilometers of the Loess Plateau is actually not suitable for growing crops. But if you zoom in, you will find that all valleys and hillsides have been opened up for arable land. Looking down from the sky, the convenient place for plant-like roots is farmland. Closer, you can see that all the hills have been transformed into terraces. However, people have found that too many terraces will cause land degradation, and disasters such as mudslides will occur in the rainy season. Since 1999, the Chinese Communist Party has realized that opening too much farmland will not significantly increase production, but it will cause natural disasters such as floods and mudslides, so it launched the “returning farmland to forests” campaign.
The farmers abandoned the low-yield fields and planted trees on them. Farmers who give up land will receive government subsidies to maintain their original income. The Chinese government has learned lessons from the past and gradually understood the key to sustainable development.
Chinese leaders once pointed out that “China attaches great importance to environmental protection, upholds the concept that green water and green mountains are the golden mountains and silver mountains, advocates the harmonious coexistence of man and nature, and adheres to the path of green development and sustainable development. »
This is not empty talk, it can be said that every word has been implemented. Many foreigners do not know why the Chinese people support leaders. One reason is that he reorganized the Chinese government and paid more attention to the environment. For example, if the environment in a certain place is too bad to follow the path of sustainable development, officials responsible for the environment can “impeach” the mayor.
Although the conversion of farmland to forests has reduced the area of arable land in China, and despite the land degradation, with the help of large-scale investment in agricultural technology, agricultural production efficiency has been improved, and domestic food production is still increasing.
One of the technologies is saline-alkali rice, which allows farmers to grow rice in saline-alkali fields.
So we can see the high range of possibilities to increase the production of food in China that is on the way to become more self-sufficient but still has to get arable lands abroad.
Let’s discover part II, the Sea in a next article.
