I recently read a comment on another blog that said Trump was going to win his tariff war with China because of a crop eating pest known as the fall armyworm that is threatening China’s domestic food supply.
So far, this worm has only attacked crops in Southern China.
The flaw in this thinking is the fact that China imports food from other countries. In fact, in 2017, China bought more food products from France than the United States, and World Bank.org lists the countries China buys from and how much China spends. All you have to do is click the World Bank link in this paragraph to discover those facts.
The comment I read mentioned Inkstone News.com, “To compound matters, China’s food supply was already under pressure after it was forced to slaughter millions of pigs with African swine fever affecting all 31 autonomous regions and provinces within just nine months, trimming 20% of the national supply and driving up prices.”
First, China is not going to starve because they lost twenty percent of the country’s pigs, because the Chinese eat a lot more than pork. I’m a vegan and have never had a problem finding a variety of plant foods to eat when visiting China.
Second, Smart Cities Dive reports, “How China Leads the World in Indoor Farming. China is investing significant amounts of effort into developing vertical farming systems to feed its burgeoning urban population. It aims to become a world leader in industrial scale applications of these systems.” …
“Compared to conventional farming, a plant factory with natural solar light can increase productivity per unit area by between two and ten times. With artificial light, this rises to 40 times and by adding vertical farming this goes to 1000 times.”
To learn more, read what Next Shark.com reveals about China’s high-tech indoor farms where “5,000-square-meter (53,819-square-foot) indoor space, produces eight to ten metric tons of vegetables DAILY while requiring only four staff members to manage it. Conventional farmlands would require about 300 farmers to produce the equivalent amount which can feed almost 36,000 people.” …
“The smart farming method involves a strict system that regulates temperature, water source, humidity, nutrients and LEDs that replace sunlight in a confined indoor space. Such regulations allow the firm to significantly save on water, granting each plant only the right amount it needs.”
If bugs, African swine fever, and global warming continue to threaten China’s domestic food supply, how fast will it take China to convert most if not all of its outdoor farms to these high-tech indoor farms?
The answer can be found in China’s high-speed rail network. China’s first high-speed train service was introduced in April 2007. Twelve years later, China has the longest high-speed railway network in the world, 18,000 miles in length, two-thirds of the world’s total, with plans to increase it to 24,000 miles by 2025.
How does China’s high-speed rail development compare to the rest of the world?
Well, the first high-speed rail system started operating in Japan in 1964, and it took the rest of the world 55 years to build one-third of the world’s high-speed railroads. The United States only has one high-speed rail line linking Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC, but those bullet trains cannot take advantage of their maximum speed because some sections along that route are old rail lines that cannot safely support trains moving 150 mph.
When China needs to, it can move fast. For instance, the Chinese government made high-speed rail construction a cornerstone of its economic stimulus program in order to combat the effects of the 2008 global financial crisis and the result was a rapid development of the Chinese rail system into the world’s most extensive high-speed rail network. China moved up its timeline when twenty million Chinese lost their factory jobs because of the global financial crises … and let us not forget that the United States was responsible for that crises due to old fashioned capitalist greed.
One day, pork might not be on the menu in China, but there will still be plenty of fruits, nuts, and vegetables, and if I can survive for thirty-seven years as a vegan, the Chinese can do it too.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.
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