Ranchers and farmers had to kill huge quantities of pigs, sheep and cattle, because they could not sell them at the right age to restaurants, which were all shut down because of the con-demic. Who is to say that China did not step in and buy some stock at rock-bottom prices, and thereby mitigate the farmers’ losses. Chinese, as is well know, will eat any damned thing, including over-ripe beeves, chickens and pigs that restaurateurs would turn their noses up at. Tough, gamy? It beats bats and snakes. So you have a part of the puzzle right there.
Another part of the puzzle is Chinese buying farmland. There was a bit of a stink about Chinese companies buying US farmland recently but that’s missing the point. Farmland in the US is expensive and the Chinese aren’t going to be major players here. Where they are becoming major players is in subsaharan Africa which has plenty of arable land, but no capital, infrastructure, or know-how to make use of it. The Chinese have a generational outlook on this and are buying up land and infrastructure elsewhere. They seem to be determined not to starve.
Contrast that with the US where a lot of our farmers are elderly and not being replaced. And those remaining farmers sure aren’t branching out to new areas outside the US.