Amazing Agriculture and Finding a Church

July 2, 2008- Wednesday

Today was a good day. We started out in the morning with a jog around the area, took showers, and headed straight for class at 8:30. Our first class was for our demographics portion of the trip and the lecturer covered population, urbanization, land resources and food balance in China. He had excellent English as he lived in the United States for over 10 years. He showed us a map of the arable land in China. It didn’t seem like there was near as much land taken up by urbanization as there was by mountains or not arable land. He told us many stories of his hometown as it pertains to agriculture. He talked a great deal about double cropping as if it was a very innovative idea. He said that they have to get the corn off early while it is still wet so they can get the winter wheat planted. He said they dry it directly on the ground or on rooftops of home rather than using electricity.

He again hit on the fact that water is a major issue facing China as a whole and specifically agriculture. I asked him about Three Gorges Dam which is a very controversial dam of The Yangtze river in 2003. This is the largest hydroelectric dam in the world and is controversial because 1.3 million people lost their homes when the river rose up. They built this to drive the water up to the 13 million people that live in Beijing.

He told us that custom harvesting is very common in China and explained once the grain is harvest, it is stored at the farmer’s home. We looked at pictures of grain storage facilities that looked like huts on stilts. He explained to us that there are many people in China who are classified as the “floating population.” They go to the city to find a job, work there until the job is done, and then go back to farming.

Another interesting fact he hit on was that in China there are 110 men for every 100 women and in some places the ratio is as high as 130/100. In the U.S., it is 100 to 100.

We talked about grain production in China. The yield has gone up steadily since 1975 and the prices has fluctuated hitting highs in 1990, 1995, and 2008. When I ask why he said that the price of grain in China is driven by the salary growth in urban areas and the consumption increase from the increase of people. Currently, as we know in the U.S., the price is one the rise again. He said that half of the Chinese soybeans are imported and when we visited the USDA last week they told us that 38% of the China’s soybeans are imported. People in urban areas consume more meat, oil crops, medicine crops, and fruits than people in rural areas. One reason is because they have no way to store it in the rural areas. Another reason is because the people in rural areas eat almost only the food they grow such as vegetables. They really do not have the space to grow cash crops such as cotton, oil crops, fibers, sugars, and tobacco as they. Currently there are 1.3 billion people in China and they expect to have 1.47 billion people by the year 2050. Of that number 75% of them are expected to be in the urban population. Since 1992, China’s GDP per capita has grown almost 25 times and in the United States we have only grown 3 times. Also, in China you could pay for the same amount of food with $50.00 as you could with $100.0hat 0 in the U.S. By 2050, the net import rate for food is expected to be 6.98%. I think that means that they will import a total of 6.98% more agricultural products than they export. Currently they are at a net import rate of 3.77%.

The lecturer wrote a book on urbanization and food consumption. He said that grain is transported by railroad and water from the North to the South in China and that it is too expensive to transport it by truck. He said the gas prices in China are similar to ours in the United States and that the government subsidizes the taxis to keep them at the same prices. I have noticed that it is nothing here to see count ten cars on the road and have eight or nine of them be taxis. When I asked him the inevitable renewable fuel question, he laughed out loud and said, “China needs to feed the mouths not the cars. In the U.S. you are burning the food, we’d like to turn into human feed.” He thinks that they have higher corn yields in certain areas of China than Iowa because of irrigation.

He showed us many pictures of all over China. He told about areas in China where farmers must walk four hours one way to sell their products at a market. He said one particular ethinic group is just lazy and that is why they are poor. They spend there government provided fertilizer money to buy guns because they’d rather go hunting than raise their food. We have noticed people who come to the city and sell random things like peaches, vegetables, cut up cucumber salad type things, and other stuff straight from a cart. I guess it is just like us and our mums, you have to sell your stuff somewhere! He showed us pictures of some really poor people that never even owned a pair of shoes during their whole life. He also showed us pictures of clear plastic on the ground around vegetables that keeps the moisture end. He told us that the Olympic complexes used to be farmland and other areas of Beijing such as the brand new railway station that will be the number one in the world and will support trains that will run 200 m.p.h. and the new airport terminal at the largest airport in the world has taken up valuable farmland.

Wow! After that information filled class, we headed to “The Blackwell” (again, this is named after our nice hotel with a nice restaurant at OSU) for lunch. We got some spicy beef sandwiches, sweet and sour pork, white rice, and some other stuff that I cannot remember and paid for it with our meal plan cards. I walked over to the market to buy some camera batteries as I smoked (literally, I had smoke coming from my rechargeable batteries charger) my charger yesterday after I tried it without an electricity converter as Ashe blew up our converter when she tried to use an American hairdryer on it. There must have been enough wind to blow away the smog because it was unusually sunny outside. I think I will be pretty pale when I come home. I purchased batteries, some souvenir chop sticks, and some rice cakes and chocolate snacks. I also saw some men setting up an information shack for the Olympics along the sidewalk. There were about 10 people dressed in blue “Beijing 2008” volunteer shirts. I am curious to know why they have a shack like this set up where we live because we are really not all that close to the Olympic venues. I guess there will be TONS of people converging on the city so they will be really spread out and help will be needed all over. When I returned, Ashe and Jess were asleep and I woke them up to head to our next class.

We had another three hour lecture on agriculture. This time it was our normal agricultural teacher, Nia. She asked us our topics for our final paper in her class. Most of my classmates are not really agriculturally literate so they are struggling to find topics they have a solid foundation with. I have decided to do mine on the impact that renewable fuels world-wide has on China. Paige picked Genetically Modified Organisms and the fact that China says they do not use them. Jess went with the evolution of machinery use in China and Ashe is thinking about protein consumption as it relates to where people live and the money they have.
She threw out the number that 10% of the arable land feeds 22% of the world’s population. She talked about the need for many different varieties of rice, corn, wheat, and beans, but said that China does not use any genetically modified crops except for cotton. She also said that she does not use soybean oil because she is afraid it might be genetically modified. She said that in 2000, 65% of all farmed areas were cultivated, 26% were planted, and 19% were harvested by a machine. She showed an interesting picture of lots of combines on the highways as they move from the south of China to the north doing custom harvesting. She said that for harvesting rice, it takes 120 Yuan per mu (a mu is 15 hectares and a hectare is about 2.5 acres).

We talked a little bit about GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) in China. She kept calling all GMO’s Bt. I know that Bt corn is made to resist corn borer and I assme that cotton would be made to do something similar. She said that only cotton is grown Genetically Modified and that corn and wheat are only in tests, but I don’t believe her. I think that if they are going to be feeding all of these people and over half of the world’s pork, they’ve got to be as productive as possible. She said that Bt rice is only allowed in India and that some people say Genetic Modification is harmful to human health. She said that she and most of her friends use peanut oil because soybean oil comes form the states and they say they don’t allow genetic modification into those products, but you never know. I thought of our (from our farm) food grade beans that go to Japan and wondered of they are made into tofu and soy oil or not. She mentioned that a common crop in China is rapeseed, which is grown in the Sichuan province, the area where the earth quake occurred.

She talked about how big of a deal biotechnology is and listed companies such as Pioneer, Monsanto, and John Deere. She said that Monsanto has their own extension staff that goes and sells to the farmers and does test plots to show the difference. They have organizations to teach and train the farmers. She said that the research institutions have extension stations in the township that are manned by the ministry of agriculture and connects people with knowledge.

We then talked about grain productivity. She said that total grain productivity has declined and the arable land has decreased. She said they lose a million mu each year. A mu is 15 hectares. Also the land quality has declined due to increase of pollution and decrease of organic content. Natural disasters have increased by more than 60%. Research and development has weakened. Incentive for farmers to grow grain has fallen. She said it is okay to grown grain in Inner Mongolia (we are going there during the 5th week) because there is not much pollution or factories.

Next she told us about international competition. She said there are big gaps in high quality products, food processing, technology innovation, and extension. The share of cereal pricing is 70% in the developed countries and 10% in China. She said that although their land is extensive, they do not have the advantages of international markets. They have some advantages in products that require extensive labor, but their quality cannot meet the standards of some countries. She said the export vegetables to Japan and South Korea and that they are the largest exporter in the world. They cannot export their poultry to the United States and they eat a lot the parts of the chicken that we don’t. She said that if we had free trade with them in poultry they’d eat the feet and we’d eat the breasts. Her quote was, “I really like the chicken feet and the head. In one setting, I could eat at least four chicken feet and have a nice glass of wine. I also like the feet of pig. I like all the feet.” Ha. She said that most Chinese do not like the chicken breast, most like the wings and legs. They do buy pork from the United States, but no beef because of BSE.

In the U.S. 19 cents of every dollar spent of food goes to the farmer. The rest goes to transportation, advertising, processing and other costs. The range for that number in China is 10-20 cents, so similar. She talked about how the USDA has the best agricultural website in the world. She said it is a great place to find out projected outlooks for certain products. She said that every year in February they have an ag outlook conference put on by the ministry of Ag. She said that experts give reports on certain crops. Usually there is a surge in the market prices for cereal grains in the U.S. around about this time. I wonder if this meeting has anything to do with that.

She said that in the area of food quality, most countries do not trust them and that in food processing China is behind because most of their food is quickly consumed. They makes some jices and jams, but not too much else. She talked for a while about research and development and told us that most of the Extension staff are low educational level, only having 66% with atleast a vocational degree or below. Of the 100,000 staff in the Agricultural Institute, only 1/3 of them have graduated from the University. She said that extension budget is less than $1.00 per farmer.

After class, some of the tourmates went to DangFong’s for supper. All of us will go at some point, but she said she likes to take just a few at a time. A few made plans to go with Andy, one of the Chinese grad students to an electronics market and a mall where they would have Olympic-Beijing 2008 shirts for sale. The three of us girls wanted to go, but we wanted to chill out a little bit before hand. We asked Andy if he would write down the name of the place in Chinese so that we could just show the taxi driver when we were ready to head that way. He did just that and it worked out perfect. Having had no internet for a few days, we decided to venture out and find some wireless. We hit up Starbucks first, and it looks like we found our new hang out. Mark, the only other “farm kid” on the trip had the same idea and was in there also. Jessica’s computer has a virus so we traded off and on while I read a book until were satisfied with our internet consumption. When we decided to leave, we told Mark our plans for going to the mall and he said he’d come with us.

We took our computers back to the hotel and headed to the street to get a taxi. The taxi dropped us off about two miles from our hotel in a HUGE complex. I mean there were probably fifteen really tall buildings in a 360 degree radius around us. We walked into what looked like the mall and found the grocery store that Andy had told us to walk through to find the Olympic Souvenirs. The mall was HUGE and most of it was completely underground. We knew that we needed to find the big “Wal-Mart” type place called Carrefour and walk through it to the other side where the Olympic store would be. We probably could have figured it out on our own, but we showed our slip of paper to a stranger, hoping he’d point us in the right direction. As always, the friendly Chinese nature in this man came out. He used his best English to try to tell us where to go and then said, “I’ll just take you.” He walked us clear though the mall to the Olympic store. I really don’t think an American would do that for a group of Chinese kids. We’d probably just wave them in the general direction. We each of us bought a couple of Olympic shirts and figured out what size we needed in the 160-190 size range.

We got money out of an American ATM and then walked around the mall for a while. The place was huge, but we didn’t buy anything else aside from the Olympic items. We eventually headed outside in pursuit of something to eat. We walked around and looked at all of the huge buildings and read the signs on them. There were American and Italian restaurants and even a buffet, but we just kept walking, looking at more and more stuff. Eventually we saw a big sign that was lit up saying, “Christian Church” in the distance. We walked toward it, wanting to check it out. When we got up close, it was big and seemingly elaborate. We walked around it looking for a posted sign of meeting times, but didn’t find anything. We walked to a nearby Chinese restaurant to eat. We picked pointed to a few items in the picture menu, ate, and took a taxi home.