Agriculture Class and Volleyball

July 3, 2008- Thursday

Today we got up even earlier than usual to hit the trail (okay, it is a bunch of streets and sidewalks full of people and we go on a different path everyday, but I’ll call it a trail) because the girls wanted to go to Starbucks before class and get on the faster, wireless internet. They wanted to get on one of the chatting mechanisms. I usually stay out jogging longer than they do because I think it is a waste to sit in the room idle while waiting for my turn in the shower so I came to Starbucks after and quickly uploaded a few pictures and checked my email.

We arrived at class early, and the rest of the group wasn’t on time. Melissa reminded us of the importance of being respectful to the teachers. The class was taught by Nia (I have since found out that her name is spelled Nie) and dealt a great deal with agricultural economics. She told us about the difference between the invisible hand where the market regulates the supply and demand which as an effective way of resource allocation and the visible hand which entails government intervention on the market. She talked about market failure which is when the market fails to perform such as providing public goods, making income distribution relatively equal, conserving the natural resource and protecting environment and how sometimes government intervention is necessary.

In Chinese agriculture, because of small scale, they have a low educational level and high risk, and more poor people engaged in the industry, the government intervention is very important. I wondered if we have highly uneducated agriculturalists. I wondered how so and if not, why. She said the major government functions are stabilizing agricultural production and the markets. Agricultural production faces two kinds of natural risks (i.e. floods, droughts, pests and diseases etc.) and market risk (fluctuation).

Since China is a transition country, ag faces another risk due to policy. Policy makers make policies not suitable for the situation, damaging the farmer’s welfare. For example, in 1998 when some leader was in office the price for food was higher and the government wanted to control this so they only allowed the farmers to sell their product in their own province. In the Sunan province the price was lower because they had a lot more supply and they weren’t allowed to go to other provinces. The police would check each car on the road for grain. Experts argued about the number of police men and the number of farmers was not equal at all. There were not enough police to stop them. Experts wrote to the central government and said this doesn’t work for the price. The minister of agriculture gathered experts to come up with a conclusion, they decided that this kind of regulation, keeping the products in the provinces would not work.

The price of grain from last year is up here in China- an increase of 20-30%. They are still waiting for a higher price to get more income. The policy this year has limited the corn to export. Now, all the corn has to be sold in domestic market. The price of corn has increased, but it is lower than the international market and the price of rice has decreased. It decreases around the spring festival because the rice is highly consumed. (This doesn’t make sense, but that is what she said.)The train transports other goods such as meat which is consumed on special occasions. She also said that the storage if full of rice already- making more supply than demand. More middle class people are eating protein, therefore consuming more grain that it takes to feed the animals, and less rice. Sometimes rice produced that is not suitable for humans is fed to animals, but most of the time this doesn’t occur.
She said that the main function of the state is to guarantee the farmer’s income and consumer welfare by reducing price fluctuation. The most common measures are budgeted- financed purchase of excess farm products for reserve or exports and release them in lean years.

She said if you want to help a farmer, the only thing you can do is give them information. Public goods can’t be provided by individuals or they might be provided, but not efficiently. “The public goods” may differ by amount certain countries and regions. Irrigation and drainage system along rivers in China are public good in poor villages, but individuals are able in invest in some places. A small farmer cannot be efficient with is operation since he cannot afford machinery. The government subsidizes so that rural communities can afford machinery.
Research and extension in agricultural are invested by government reform of research and extension in China is market-oriented in some extents. The government investment didn’t increase as agricultural grew.

Another function of the government is conserving natural resources. This is true for all countries. Food security and safety is also a concern. There is a trade off between “efficiency and equity” in the past, equity first with low efficiency. All students were assigned a job after college; you didn’t go find your own. People were provided with their own house, they didn’t find their own. After the reform, they had high efficiency with low equity. It was efficiently because people gained what they earned. Income disparity creates a need of redistribution by taxation. Now they have people who are earning more money than they know what to do with and people who are extremely poor.

Despite enormous economic progress in agriculture and rural area- especially after 1978, a majority of the poor live in less developed remote and rural areas in China. Government takes an important role in poverty alleviation.

After class we headed back to the mall that houses the starbucks (a five minute walk at most) and grabbed Subway (yes, they have everything here) and then utilized our time on the internet. We didn’t have to report back to campus until 4:00 p.m. when we were supposed to be playing ping pong as an organized activity. It was extremely hot and it didn’t take long or most people to get sweaty in the recreation courtyard where the ping pong tables and badminton courts are. At first we were dressed in comfortable clothes and flip flops, but after hitting the volleyball we brought around for a little while, we went back to our room to put on tennis shoes. We just hit it around in a circle for quite some time with some of the Chinese students. Some of them were really good and really went after the ball. Eventually, we moved to the courts where they have a volleyball net set up. We played a couple of games before heading in to shower. I don’t know if it is from the pollution or the texture the court is made out form, but the court is DUSTY. We were all covered in dirt from being sweaty and then hitting that dirty ball around.

For dinner the entire group walked down to a restaurant we’d walked by many times before and ordered several dishes which floated around on the lazy susan. I don’t remember what we hard, but it was probably a few meat dishes like bits of pork, beef, mutton, or chicken and some vegetable dishes. After dinner we just hung out in our rooms, did laundry, worked on our journals, and went to bed.