How China Plans to Feed 1.4 Billion Growing Appetites - make restaurant dishes at home

During an annual festival in yi County, Northwest Shanghai, 10,000 people dine on local specialties crayfish.
The booming industry adds about 100,000 tons of shellfish to local lakes every year.
Watching Jiang Wannian peaceful Cui Xiang harvest the sixth seed of an acre of daikon in the north --
Central Gansu feels a bit like going back in time.
In a dry valley surrounded by dim mountains, on a brick --
Paved lot, Jiang drove a rusty tractor on the hips
Deep hills of dry plants.
When they were crushed, Jiangcheng's wife inserted the homemade pitchfork into the straw and arranged another passage.
In the end, Jiang Heping worked side by side, with a burly figure and a tan skin.
The weather is very hot, but they are wrapped in clothes to protect themselves from dust and the sun.
They had handsome faces, tightened and lined up in years of outdoor labor, and when they threw the grain shells up and watched the ruddy seed rain fall, they turned them over
The rhythm lasted for several hours.
In a singing voice, Ping encourages the wind, muttering, blowing, blowing!
The machine can finish the work in a few minutes, but it is too expensive for Jiang Heping.
Instead, they still threaten daikon with their hands, like farmers centuries ago.
Jiang Ping represents a story about China and its farms.
There are less than 2 farms in China with more than 90%.
5 acres, the average farm area is the smallest in the world.
But this is not the only story.
In the past 40 years, China has caught up with the agricultural development that the Western world achieved in 150 and re-imagined its launch.
Every agriculture now happens at the same time: small family farms, glittering industrial meat factories and dairy farms.
Tech Farm, even organic city farm.
China is facing a daunting challenge: how to feed almost one
Fifth place in the world with less than one population --
While adapting to changing tastes, its farmland accounts for a tenth.
About 57% of China's population lived in cities 30 years ago, but by 2016, the population lived in a richer, more sophisticated China. Eating is becoming more and more like Western eating habits.
Chinese people eat nearly three times as much meat as they did in 1990.
From 1995 to 2010, the consumption of milk and dairy products among urban residents quadrupled, and the consumption of rural residents almost quadrupled.
China now buys a lot more processed food, about double it.
From 2008 to 2016.
Because China's agricultural resources are very limited, providing this new diet means going abroad, leading the government to encourage and help Chinese companies to acquire farmland and food companies in the United States, Ukraine, Tanzania and other places, as well as Chile.
But China has long cherished itself.
As an ideology and response to political isolation, the abundance of staple food has also had an impact on the domestic sphere.
On 2013, President Xi Jinping told rural officials when discussing food policy that our rice bowls should be mainly filled with Chinese food.
This raises a tricky question: if the Chinese are going to feed themselves and eat as much as the Americans do, what does that mean for the way they farm? This chicken-
The processing plant in northwest Shanghai is one of the largest in China, employing about 1,500 workers and handling more than 10,000 birds per hour.
The factory is operated by Thailand Group CP Group and supplies fast
Restaurant chain
The mismatch between China's agricultural supply and demand seems insurmountable.
The area of cultivated land is 0. 334 billion mu, of which the pollution area is about 37 million, or the reserved land is restored. There are 1.
There are 4 billion people who need to be fed, but it is almost impossible to replicate large farms that fuel Western diets here.
This is partly due to the fact that most of the terrain in China is mountains or deserts, but also because farmland is divided by about 0. 2 billion farms.
The agricultural landscape in China is not so much a green blanket as a patchwork quilt.
Patches for ginger and Pingyi are adjacent to their villages.
Walled houses lined up along paved streets
End at the corn field.
Their area is called Team 7, a remnant of the collective period under Mao Zedong, when the state told farmers what to plant and took most of what they produced.
Jiang Ping experienced the great famine in the late 1950 s and early 1960 s,
When food runs out, Chiang can recall eating cooked bark and belts.
After the end of the collective system in 1981, the state retained land ownership, but allocated equal rights to farm land among villagers.
In the process, Jiang Ping divided into four plots of land less than three acres.
They sent their daughter, a 36-year-old. year-old tour-
The company staff visited her parents from Kunming 1,200 miles away and took me to visit their farm.
Under the hot and sunny sky, Jiang Yuping is wearing white jeans, fake cars and melons --colored off-
Shoulder shirt, take me to the end of the street.
I saw a little mud.
The walled building near the irrigation canal asked why the Outer House was so close to the water. She blinks.
She said it looked at me doubtfully like a temple of worship.
When I apologized, she pointed out the sweet Yeju land of her family, an acre of short emerald land --
Hued plants for sweeteners.
We went further and she showed me half an acre of flax seeds planted under the slender chimney of the factory.
Two kilometers away.
The lane highway is a plot of radish, lettuce, corn, etc.
Later, she talked about her parents and what she wanted their farm to be more like a farm in the United States.
She told me to look at China: most of the land is hard to manage.
This is a waste of people and resources.
The decentralized nature of Chinese farms is very different from that of Western ones, which goes against the way food is produced in the industrialized world.
Huang Jikun, an agricultural economist at Peking University, said that if China wants to use domestic crops to satisfy its changing appetite, we need some changes.
Irrigation must be upgraded, and technology and mechanization need to be expanded, he said.
But he said the first thing to feed China from home is to expand China's small farms.
The solution may seem simple: replace the patchwork quilt with a huge blanket that can be trimmed down at once.
But Huang warned that the big isn' t is always the best.
Major crops such as corn, rice and wheat in China are producing the highest per-British yield in a moderate range: a study shows that sweet spots are between 5 and 17 acres.
If you have a very small farm where a farmer is weeding and the work is very tight, noted Fred Gale, senior American economistS.
The Department of Agriculture and crop production per mu will reflect this, which is usually higher than when using large machines.
China's plan is not to merge the property of small farmers such as Jiangping into Kansas. style farms.
This is almost impossible in logistics, and it will also stimulate social chaos by rooting millions of farmers.
For now, at least, the idea is to gather nearby fields into a farm the size of a Walmart Supercenter parking lot.
Spending a few days with Jiang Ping, it's hard to understand that China also has some of the world's most advanced industrial farms.
The epitome of this is the meat and dairy industry, where officials followed suit in the West.
I had to go to East China in order to see for myself, where I visited a 4-year-
Older dairy products than most parts of the United States.
In the spring, farmers planted seedlings in the traditional Laohuzui terraces, and some were prepared with plows pulled by Buffalo.
China has shifted more to industrialized agriculture, but small farmers still play a key role.
In China's largest dairy farm, Bengbu Farm, a modern farm in Anhui province, it took me nearly five minutes to walk through a cow House and the length of the processing plant.
It is dark and cold, and it has a sweet taste, half of which is an animal and half of which is rotten, which is not unpleasant.
Black Cowand-
Quiet white mottled Holsteins.
They put their heads into the slotted metal fence and reached the feed along the concrete sidewalk, looking at me, a white --
Break-ins in sterile work clothes, sets of shoes, Hood and mask have a slight interest.
The farm covers an area of nearly 600 acres and has built 8 huge barns, each of which can accommodate 2,880 cows.
Other barns and sheds have calves and pregnant cows, bringing the farm's largest number of cows to 40,000, making it one of the world's largest farms.
One of the charms of industrial agriculture is its huge scale, which China has given in to as it has expanded production of meat and dairy products.
China has always valued pork in its diet, and traditionally pigs are raised on backyard land.
Just in the latest 2001, farms with more than 50 live pigs accounted for only one quarter of the market.
Estimated at 2015-
Four pigs are produced on these farms in China.
Demand for poultry and eggs is expanding and industrial farms are responding.
But perhaps the most surprising thing is the industrialisation of the dairy farm, as I visited in Bengbu.
Like pigs, traditional production is family-based, but after 2008 of the food --
Amid a safety scandal involving heavily contaminated baby formula, China has pushed the industry to modernize.
Of the 2008 farms, nearly one of the six has 200 or more cows.
2013 more than one of the three.
It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of food safety to Chinese consumers.
In addition to the deadly melamine in infant formula, the scandal included the use of banned pesticide-treated long beans and adulterated fox meat spread as donkeys.
A 2016 study by McKinsey found that,
Chinese consumers are worried that the food they eat is harmful to their health.
A large number of small farms make China's food system almost completely unmanageable in terms of food safety, said Scott Rozell, an expert on Chinese rural issues at Stanford University.
What Chinese consumers want is that industrial milk farms and slaughter houses can trace and hold quality accountable.
In fact, a spoken phrase traditionally used to describe relaxation has been re-used. Let go of your heart.
The farmers have repeatedly assured me that I can take their food to heart;
In other words, it is safe to enjoy it.
At the modern farm, officials introduced me to an employee, Zhang Yunjun, whose home has always been the location of the office.
Hundreds of villagers have been relocated at Bengbu farm, and the government has moved them to the roadside.
When officials promised to work in dairy products, new housing, and regularly increase the time spent on land rental, people in the village were willing to cooperate.
Before the dairy farm, Zhang worked with two relatives for about six acres of peanuts and wheat.
Now that he is 55 years old, he often sleeps in the barn, earning more than twice his income from farming.
People are very happy, he said.
Work is really hard as a farmer.
I can make more now.
Since the end of 1970, China has begun a massive reform that has transformed China from an isolated, central-controlled economy to an increasingly market-oriented one.
Facing giants.
The modernization of agriculture and industry has driven China's continued migration to cities, increased incomes and increased interest in a more Westernized diet.
There are 4 billion people.
China's daily intake of meat, poultry, seafood and internal organs has surpassed that of the United States.
The daily intake of calories per person is 600us.
China's population density is high and low density mi500 kmtaklimakandesertchina plateau the population of East Taiwan in Tibet's urban city is sultry in the East-
Fertile land and warm climate
China has been industrialized.
The West is rugged with abundant resources such as coal and oil, but most of them are plateaus or deserts.
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Production reforms have helped China's growing population double its daily heat supply.
Billion people.
5 China 3,108 calories2, 41611,594 US 0.
China's urban population has grown by about 0. 6 billion since 1980.
Most people look for better jobs and wages in the industrial sector.
Half of China's population has now joined the global middle class, and hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty.
China is considered one of the world's fastest growing economies in nearly 40 years.
Gross domestic product per capitaS.
The Chinese mainland claims that Taiwan is the third province, costing $8,123.
Taiwan government (
Republic of China)
There are two political entities that insist.
The "global middle class" refers to people who earn $11 to $110 a day, which is "lower" than those who earn $2 to $11 a day ", for those who earn less than $2 a day, the "poor" is measured at $2011S.
Dollars for purchasing power parity.
Manuel Canales and Matthew W.
Staff of CHWASTYK, NGM;
Source: Food balance sheet, FAOSTAT (CALORIES);
Homi Harras, the Brookings Institution (INCOME);
World Urbanization outlook of the United Nations Population Division (
Rural and urban population);
Data on national accounts of the World Bank and OECD (GDP); LANDSCAN (2016),UT-
Bartel, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; EARTHSTAT. ORG;
Since the end of 1970, USDAAN's appetite for more calories per day, 600 comprehensive reforms have transformed China from an isolated, central-controlled economy to an increasingly market-oriented economy.
The Oriental giant.
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Its population ratio is only 6.
The most densely populated urban area in 2015, 23.
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The population is 108.
More than 5200 people are sultry in the East-
Fertile land and warm climate
China has been industrialized.
Half of China's population has joined the global middle class, with 416 people out of poverty.
China's urban population has grown by about 0. 6 billion, compared with 1980.
Most people look for better jobs and wages in the industrial sector.
According to statistics, China has been one of the fastest growing economies in the world for nearly 40 years.
At present, the population of the United States is 5941, and the per capita gdp is 400GDP. S.
The American population is $8,123.
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Taiwan government (
Republic of China)
There are two political entities that insist.
The "global middle class" refers to people who earn $11 to $110 a day, which is "lower" than those who earn $2 to $11 a day ", for those who earn less than $2 a day, "poor," according to the U. S.
Dollar, adjusted at purchasing power parity.
Manuel Canales and Matthew W.
Staff of CHWASTYK, NGM;
Source: Food balance sheet, FAOSTAT (CALORIES);
Homi Harras, the Brookings Institution (INCOME);
World Urbanization Prospects of the United Nations Population Division (
Rural and urban population);
Data on national accounts of the World Bank and OECD (GDP); LANDSCAN (2016),UT-
Bartel, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; EARTHSTAT. ORG;
Fred Gale, every big supporter of USDANearly
Scale farms tell me some versions of this story, saying big farms are an effective way to solve rural poverty.
It is believed that farmers can work for large farms, rent their land and earn two incomes at the same time.
But reality doesn't always match the sales strategy.
Ye Jingzhong, a rural sociology at China Agricultural University in Beijing, said they did hire people, but that was very limited.
If they want to make money, the first thing they want to cut is labor employment.
And they can only employ a very limited number of low
Farm workers with wages
When the sun began to fall, I visited the displaced villagers and found that their enthusiasm for dairy products was much thinner than Zhang's.
They live in a flat grid cluster. roofed, two-
High-rise apartment buildings painted yellow, surrounded by peanuts and corn fields on three sides.
When crossing the road, dairyâx80 x99 s field rolls reach far away.
A woman hanging clothes in her little cement yard told me that the water now smells interesting.
I have been told by a few people that the milk company has not hired a lot of workers, their houses are crumbling and the rental income has not changed in four years.
Everyone complained about the inevitable foul smell of the manure sprayed in the field.
The people I spoke to seemed happy with moving, but no one seemed so upset either.
The overriding emotion is resignation.
For most rural Chinese, these agricultural projects are double at best.
Just like they are in other parts of the world.
Large animal farms can free some Chinese from the hard work of farmers, but they also pose serious environmental and health risks.
The government's 2010 pollution census found that agriculture is the biggest water supplier, even worse than manufacturing.
Facing all the pollution challenges in China, it is difficult to see how much pollution there is in China.
Large-scale animal production will avoid pollution and public health problems. for example, dairy farms in California are smaller than large dairy farms. farms in China.
The government stated that it recognized the dangers and emphasized the treatment of animal waste in a sustainable manner.
Many agricultural enterprises in China, including modern agriculture, have the same concerns.
In Bengbu, the company installed biogas digesters to convert feces into enough energy to satisfy
Third, it needs and uses
Products that fertilize their fields.
"There is almost no waste," said gentle Liu Qiang.
A polite guided tour with glasses that took me to the farm.
From fields to barns, from milking rooms to bottling plants, the whole thing was a demonstration in the country, he said.
Across Hangzhou Bay from Shanghai, on the edge of a glittering mudflat, a Thai animal --
The Feed Group is building a large
A farm for sustainable development.
In exchange for the rest of the rent and 20-
Annual Contract for Charoen Pokphand or CP Group is converting 6,425 acres of filled land
Grain production in mudflats outside Cixi City.
The goal is to "create value for society in all directions," said Wang Qingjun, senior vice president wearing loose casual pants and shirts.
This is also the future of Chinese agriculture: a multinational company has invested billions of yuan into an agricultural food complex consisting of fields, farms, factories, corporate offices and even the ultimate, staff Housing ranges from apartments to beach houses.
Rice fields covered 3,600 acres last summer.
Among them, 115 acres of land are grown organically with crabs for food.
There are drones that produce greenhouses, broccoli fields, and distribute chemicals.
A dumpling factory andmillion-
The egg factory plans to double the size enough to justify the temperature
A sensitive robot that automatically kills dead birds.
CP Group also expects to harvest enough chicken soup each year to produce 22,000 tons of organic fertilizer.
Last year, the company built a vertical farm, a ventilated, translucent box with 6 30-
The foot tower with a rotating shelf with a plant bed, similar to the Ferris wheel.
They had cabbage, amaranth and leeks when I went.
The controlled environment allows targeted application of fertilizers, eliminates the need for most pesticides and produces four times the output of fields with the same floor area, Wang said.
This is very promising for a country with too little farmland, especially in which farmers increase the country's pollution disaster by using three times the fertilizer they need.
It has also set up a CP Group to comply with the government's goal of restricting the use of fertilizers and pesticides by 2015, announced in 2020.
Each part of the pig is used in the linyi Jinluo meat skin. this process can produce 267 products.
The world's largest pork factory, with 4,000 workers, processes 32 million pigs a year, most of them from independent farms.
This complex is largely an exercise in applying manufacturing logic to food, and Wang Jianlin sees it as a model of vertical integration, which struck me as a practical, Dreamer
He said the relationship between man and land should be harmonious.
He saw the food.
The manufacturing system that CP Group is building is a way to achieve this.
For eggs, this means growing grain for poultry feed, breeding chickens, and then slaughtering and processing after consumption.
The dumpling dough will be made from CP Group wheat and will be filled with the company's meat and produce.
The company has its own grocery store in order to sell the product.
This is an impressive vision, if not unexpected.
But, for example, if L. Liszt finally enters the fruit, pollution may spread more widely and quickly than the dispersion system Americans know.
Almost all big
The scale farms in China are run by the government, cooperatives and enterprises, but I also met Liu Lin, a farmer in Inner Mongolia, who has become very good.
Alfalfa for industrial dairy farms.
When he was a teenager, Liu heard a radio about American agriculture and its use of machines to farm land.
It sounds better than breaking the soil with a hoe and he becomes obsessed.
Over time, Liu persuaded the local government to lease him about 2,470 acres.
He bought advanced agricultural machinery from the United States. S.
In four hours, 30 workers can be completed in Europe for 20 days.
When I saw Liu last summer, his farm had several huge barns, workers' barracks, an office and parking lot, and one or two more
Story villa overlooking the pond.
I was impressed by watching a French silage baler rumbling in the fields.
In 89 seconds, it uses a vacuum cleaner to compress the trimmed alfalfa to 1,700-
Surround it with plastic and discharge it to the ground.
Later, Liu took his car, a Lexus SUV, to town for cleaning. his daughter-in-
Luo drove me to meet him, driving her husband's Lexus sedan and playing Amy Winehouse in the stereo.
In the hustle and bustle of the car wash, I asked him how much he made: $10,000 a month over $1,505?
I couldn't hear his response, but I saw him laughing.
Later, my translator told me that he emphasized that yes, he did a lot more than that.
I thought of Liu while visiting the parks and corporate offices of CP group park, where it easily and intuitively sees another big farm selling point that is less talked about: money.
Experts may argue about the size of the most produced food on an acre farm, but industrial farms are still more profitable than small farms.
The CP Group is working to ensure this;
The group has hired top American business scholars and consultants like McKinsey to help it succeed.
When I visited Cixi Park in August, the weather was hot and humid, and Wang took me to a place where the air was fresh.
PowerPoint presentation in a conditional meeting room.
We continued to have lunch at an executive restaurant with windows overlooking the ground, and about a dozen of us were sitting at a heavy wooden table with a rotating center.
I was given an honorary seat, and on the right side of the King's House, we ate 27 plates on lazy Susan, including grapes and pitaya in the park's greenhouse.
Wang gave me red wine and praised me warmly according to Chinese customs.
This is the most hearty meal I have ever had in China.
Even as China tries to scale up its agriculture, many wealthy urbanites have surpassed the mistrust of industrial agriculture.
A compelling example can be found in northern Beijing, where Jiang Zhengchao, Jiang's son, is helping to build the latest member of China's agricultural future.
Behind two low concrete buildings next to a roaring highway, he looks after five acres of land that make up his agricultural quilts in China.
Shrimp kernels of Guolian Aquatic Products in Zhanjiang city, Guangdong province, China were shelled.
Nearly a hundred watermelons, eggplants, taro and corn were planted in ginger.
He takes some to the wholesale market, but his main business is to convince
Beijingers pay him six months later.
Monthly instalment for delivery of safe farm every week
They have fresh food at their doorstep.
He also rented the plot to those who wanted to grow food and charged an extra fee and he would take care of them.
After starting his business without pesticides and fertilizers, he is now rarely using pesticides and fertilizers;
Customers are hesitant about the vegetables entering the station and the fruit with insufficient volume.
Jiang said that I have this emotional connection with agriculture. he has a degree in social work.
He worked in an office he hated for three years.
In the end, he returned to the farm, which was very frustrating for his parents, who equate the fields with drudgery.
'I can't afford a luxurious life,' he said. 'It doesn't matter.
Jiang is part of the rural phenomenonborn, college-
The educated Chinese returned to the field.
Despite the small size, it is common for young people who return to the countryside to have a phrase.
They now have an organization dedicated to supporting their interests, the Wotu Centre for sustainable agricultural development, and a magazine called sustainable agriculture.
China's organic industry is booming, with sales growing by 30-
According to the most recent industry analysis, folding since 2006.
Researchers say there are at least 122 communities
Supporting agriculture (CSA)
Farmers have sprung up following the same model as the river, but the movement claims hundreds of projects.
Several West in the country-
All the big cities are running the farmers market.
For consumers, the appeal of small farms is twofold.
Part of the reason is the belief that the farm can provide safe food.
But smaller farms also reflect China's agricultural heritage, said Wen Tiejun, a leading scholar in rural China, which is attractive to both rural and urban China.
In Asia, you have 40 centuries of agriculture, Wen said.
Not only do you provide enough food for this huge population, but the environment is very good.
People know and remember this, he said.
In 2008, Wen helped discover an organic farm in Beijing.
The next year, after one of his graduate students returned from Minnesota, it became a CSA, where she studied with food activists.
The share of this food in the Chinese market is still very small.
But it shows that many Chinese restaurants are not fully sold in future industrial meals.
Jiang Zhengchao understands why his parents are willing to leave their farm behind, and he is not willing to repeat their hardships.
But he is also skeptical about the need for industrial farms.
When I visited him, Jiang always took me and some colleagues to a barbecue restaurant to eat.
We sat at a plastic table outside and looked at a fat woman in a tight apron leaning towards a narrow metal grill on sawhorse's legs.
An industrial fan whizzes over it, spinning a tendrils of smoke in the evening air.
This woman brought us pork caramel pieces, roast chicken hearts, fiber lime mushrooms dipped in sauce and black sesame seeds, roasted garlic cloves, eggplant with oil and vinegar, peanuts mixed with soy sauce.
It eats more meat than Chiang when he was a child, but it is far less typical of Americans.
As the lights fade, the old farmers hang out in a corner and sell the excess scallions.
Jiang told me that he liked his life and later quoted poetry as saying that the Americans tended to simply call it life: an old but comfortable house, nothing too fancy, there was a beautiful one in the woods
'I don't think it was a bad thing in the past that people could feed themselves from their own land,' he said.
In China, people will look down on you if you are a farmer, but I like it very much.
Life is short, so I do what I like to do.
Jiang sees the benefits of the changes that Chinese farms have experienced over the past 40 years.
Our pork and chicken were part of it for him.
The same is true of his lifestyle, including a time trip through rural Gansu and ultra-modern Beijing.
But he is not sure if he will stick with CSA;
It paid very little and spent so much work.
He told me that maybe he would go back to Gansu and try to build a big farm.