Posted on 09/26/2020 3:54:07 PM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
Those numbers (corn and rice) have to be a mistake, or, the problem is insignificant. 50 tons of corn is not even two semi-truckloads. My neighbor harvests considerably more than that every day of harvest. Even the 760,000 tons of soybeans is not a large amount for a country with the population of China.
Consider: 1 bushel of soybeans = ~ 0272155 metric ton.
US production in 2019 was 3,558,281,000 bushels of soybeans, or, approximately 96,840,397 tons of soybeans.
The Chinese released roughly 0.78% of what the US produced in 2019.
Some of the other numbers are similarly insignificant. China imports only a tiny fraction of their food supply from the US. They actually import more from Brazil. China farms, as best I can tell, roughly 320 million acres of farmland (which may not include all the many small plots in cities, families in cities with caged or “in the (sometimes tiny) yard” chickens, hogs, etc.) 13 million acres of flooded farmland (best estimate I could find) is significant, but not disastrous.
The hog plague, however, IS significant, and the fowl problems somewhat so. China also has a significant problem with depleted aquifers (despite all the flooding). Water always seems to have a mind of its own!
Check out this article, esp. the section on “production”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_China
They blew the levies to divert flood water out of the river into lowland farm acreage. Flood control is overwhelmed. Rats are doing well. Probably have a book with recipes to cover all the options.
Locusts across Africa and Eastern Asia.
Always curious why they just dont eat the locust? There tons of food there! John the Baptist loved them!
Apparently, we have plenty of wild bore to donate.
That’s a meal or two. The grain destroyed feed them for months.
Related (interesting comments to me, since our neighbor started drying and shipping grain from silos he put up across the road from us.)
https://www.thecombineforum.com/threads/how-much-grain-can-you-transport-on-roads.14464/
So the richer Chinese have assets and the poorer Chinese are more likely to starve.
That the Chinese collectively have assets doesn’t mean a whole lot—though I wouldn’t want to be a North Korean.
IS that the Red Chinese menu which features “Wuhan Carry Out” foods?
Eat our food and they will carry you out, with egg rolls.
This is why Red China is buying so much US food stuffs - grains, corns, soybeans, etc.
Don’t forget, re their military build-up, they can lose millions or tens of millions of peasants in another famine no one will cover in the mainstream media, and still have enough men under arms to overrun SE Asia and some of India, plus South China islands.
Wonder if the Bidens made a profit off of foodstuff dealing with Red China. I feel a need for a major congressional investigation into the Bidens helping build up the Reds military aggression machinery.
#36. YES! The famines in No. Vietnam during the 50’s cost an estimated 1 million lives. That in No. Korea over time, millions. Under Stalin, the Holomador (Ukraine) and elsewhere (the mines, gulags, slave labor camps), possibly up to 10 million or more. Khmer Rouge in Cambodia - a total death toll including killings/genocide, working people to death, diseases, and famine - around 1.5 to 2.0 million.
See: R. J. Rummel, “Death By Government”, Routledge, 1994, chapters on each of the above, plus the smaller but informative (esp. on Cambodia), “The World’s Bloodiest History: Massacre, Genocide, and the Scars They Left On Civilization” Joseph Cummins, Crestline/Book Sales Inc., 2010.
For Vietnam, see: “The Human Cost of Communism in Vietnam”, 1972, Sen. Jud. Com., (it is online), “Sen. Internal Security Subcommittee”, 1972 ( a compendium study that I created and worked on) and companion studies by SISS on “The Human Cost of Soviet Communism”,1970, Robert Conquest, and “The Human Cost of Communism in China”, 1971, Prof. Richard Walker.
#31. Oh you mean the book entitled “Cooking Grandma”? Tasty, old fashion recipes.
Have you ever read the Red Chinese version of “To Serve Man”? It’s out of this world.
In my opinion, the USA should give privateers another chance. Give the liberal environmental extremists an opportunity to sink the China fishing fleet. Win win.
Yes that was the point I was trying to make. When another poster commented that food supply would not increase, I mentioned that those with assets (China) would outbid those who were poorer.
I meant Internationally, but did not clarify it. I guess (of course) there will be some some difference between rich and poor within China itself, but I doubt that starvation would occur there this Winter (because they still had plenty of assets to buy food Internationally). If total food supply declined so badly that famine would result (I don’t see it, unless it is a political decision), then somewhere else would likely starve first.
Maybe if there are some worst case scenarios continuing to play out, famine might develop in China eventually,but near term, they have enough money for food. Type and amount are already changing in China due to shortages and price increases (like pork), but they are likely a long way from famine.
Belt tightening is still going to be an uncomfortable, even shocking adjustment, for people who have seen nothing but rapid growth and rising living standards for decades - young adults there have never known recession.
Thanks for the info
In my opinion, the USA should give privateers another chance
—
Not positive, but I think the Chinese fishing fleet is not defenseless ...
However, it is on the nations waters they enter to chase them off or take them out. That Ecuador has no navy to speak of, is their short-sighted problem.
FWIW Germany discovered African swine fever in their wild hog population.
I’m surrounded by corn and soybean fields and that caused me to question the amounts of corn and rice quoted.
OP : " “China’s food shortfall will only get worse in coming years unless it undertakes major agricultural reforms, warns the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.”
”A key question is, can China buy enough food to feed its 1.4 billion people if domestic production does not increase and imports are its only mainstay?
Surely, China’s food self-sufficiency rate must increase, but the current situation appears to preclude such an improvement. “
"It is difficult to ascertain the real situation since information coming out of China may not reflect the true severity of the crisis.”
Delta7 : “ If the US does not get our priorities right, we will find ourselves in the same boat. “
Pearls before Swine : ” That's right. Remember the sweeping of the supermarket shelves during the early days of the COVID panic?
Isopropyl alcohol disappeared; toilet paper disappeared; and meat counters were sorely depleted.
It doesn't take much systems disruption to cause trouble.
And, China's had a bad combo with the floods, the swine fever, and the other items mentioned in the article. “
Roman_War_Criminal : “ Well we’re not too far behind IMHO. “
I see it coming.
It’s only by the grace of God that so far we haven’t.
Can you imagine the problems should another rainless period hit the US like during the Dustbowl years? It was so bad, even the oak trees started dying off.
There’s a lot we can ward off with insecticides and pesticides, but rain, we can’t make.
While that is true, it is a factor that cannot be removed from the equation.
Giggles
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.