The country I don't understand how they do it is Bangladesh. A country the size of New York State with 164 million people. (50% of the US population). As I understand it, they generate 90% of the food they require.
The answers below are misleading by omission. While being on a river delta makes for fertile land, Bangladesh was nowhere near food independent a few decades ago. It was made so due to modern crop varieties and modern farming methods:
> During the last two decades and a half, important changes occurred in the realm of rice production and profitability. First, the cost of producing rice is several times higher than potato but the rate of profit is more than double for potato. Second, the yield of wheat, jute and potato has increased over time but the yield of rice has almost doubled from 2.16 t/ha in 1988 to 3.7 t/ha in 2000 and about 4.6 t/ha in 2014.
More than a factor of almost four increase in the yield of a staple crop that has been grown in that region for a thousand years is a technological miracle.
You raise a very good point about the increase in yield, but the reason Bangladesh has so many people in the first place is the fertile land. The lack of self-sufficiency in recent times may be due to the famines caused during the British Raj era.
>The country is notable for its soil fertility land, including the Ganges Delta, Sylhet Division and the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Agriculture is the largest sector of the economy, making up 18.6 percent of Bangladesh's GDP in November 2010 and employing about 45 percent of the workforce.[233] The agricultural sector impacts employment generation, poverty alleviation, human resources development and food security. More Bangladeshis earn their living from agriculture than from any other sector. The country is among the top producers of rice (fourth), potatoes (seventh), tropical fruits (sixth), jute (second), and farmed fish (fifth).
The reason so many people live there is precisely because they generate so much food. The ganges delta is perfect for farming rice (sans climate change)
Easy answer: Ganga-Bramhaputra delta (I do not know what they call it in Bangladesh).
To get a perspective: look at the map of egypt and map of their population density. Half the country is pretty much in Nile Delta and most of the rest is along Nile.
Chinese farm productivity is shite, and the government knows it.
It is true that the state throws absolutely colossal amount of resources on geoengineering and agriculture, yet to little effect.
China is nowhere near Holland or other advanced agriculture player in calories production per unit of labour.
Out of close to a 100 officials I went by through my career, I only managed to befriend two. From those two, I barely know in the most generalised terms of what is happening in top tiers.
Agriculture meetings are alleged to be the non-stop shit show, an every day crisis, and a way to demotion for the prime majority of cadres put on the agri committees, as most of them fail at the task.
Provincial level party executives all send their deputies instead of themselves to them as they fear demotion and penalties if they say something silly at those meetings.
Chinese bureaucracy does not deserve much credit there. Were that much of money be given to just anybody moderately competent, China would've long beaten even Holland on that.
I don't think that calories production per unit of labour is a big concern when you don't export produce and you've got access to so much labor and a socialist economy where food prices are fixed and jobs are all but guaranteed.
The Dutch have a stronger focus on produce export and a higher income per capita, so they have to be a lot more efficient in order to be competitive in the global economy.
calories per unit labour is a good measure of how advanced the agriculture tech is. Just because labour is cheap, doesn't mean it's efficient - and imagine if that labour could be spent on other things (while still maintining the output).
One thing that's not mentioned is that the freshness and variety of produce available in China is fantastic. There's much less refrigeration and transportation, so there's a good chance the produce you buy at the local street market came from nearby fields very recently. Seeing this as a visitor from the US is quite a revelation.
Chinese love seafood and fish, they consume quite a bit of it as hinted by the article. But they usually also want to buy it alive.
Therefore in supermarkets and even restaurants you usually have tanks with live fish, crabs, etc. As fresh food as can be.
Regarding vegetables, the north is actually not that north by European standards and is sunny in winter (Beijing is at the same latitude as Ibiza...). This means that in places like Beijing they can have solar greenhouses that can produce fresh, local vegetables all year long even when it's freezing outside (winters are much colder than in Europe).
Beijing, Xi'an, Chengdu, and a handful of villages nearby them. Also some roadside farmer stalls in between. I'm sure the quality and variety vary, but the sample I saw was impressive.
The government offers subsidy to the farmers to ensure base supplies such as rice to be kept low priced. Usually the farmers in China cannot complete with the farmers in the US in terms of cost, coz the local prices are not determined by free market but by the gov. I see this as a benefit of big government (but bad for the local farmers)
The author has made no efforts to hide the fact that he's a China apologetic and CCP propagation puppet. The fact is that the majority of the country's rice and corns are imported (from SE Asia or N/S America), which are Chinese main calory source. Another often overlooked fact is that China has built a vast crops storage network across the nation, for the fact that a small interruption in food supply chain could cause huge humanitarian disaster, and the new crops will rotate out old stale crops, which are barely eatable but sure, they're better than nothing. Most Chinese even have no idea of this, that their daily rice supplies are usually 5+ yrs old, unless you pay a premium to buy them from Whole Food equivalent super markets in China.
> Most Chinese even have no idea of this, that their daily rice supplies are usually 5+ yrs old
Even during the Maoist period 'new rice' was given out/sold once a year for celebration. Everyone was aware they were eating rotated granary rice.
Storing crops against famine (and eating the old, stored grain) is an ancient tradition [1] dating back to at least 6000 BC, and in China, guarding against famine was one of the earliest tasks of the Chinese proto-state.
What's also overlooked is that China went through one of the worst man made famines in history, and the government has internalized many of the lessons (paid in blood) from that affair.
true, I can stomach the propaganda, but that aside, the way he links each chunk of the story together is really fun. Hes like a college professor that I would of loved to have , where every lecture was a mini adventure.
Readit News
> During the last two decades and a half, important changes occurred in the realm of rice production and profitability. First, the cost of producing rice is several times higher than potato but the rate of profit is more than double for potato. Second, the yield of wheat, jute and potato has increased over time but the yield of rice has almost doubled from 2.16 t/ha in 1988 to 3.7 t/ha in 2000 and about 4.6 t/ha in 2014.
More than a factor of almost four increase in the yield of a staple crop that has been grown in that region for a thousand years is a technological miracle.
>The country is notable for its soil fertility land, including the Ganges Delta, Sylhet Division and the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Agriculture is the largest sector of the economy, making up 18.6 percent of Bangladesh's GDP in November 2010 and employing about 45 percent of the workforce.[233] The agricultural sector impacts employment generation, poverty alleviation, human resources development and food security. More Bangladeshis earn their living from agriculture than from any other sector. The country is among the top producers of rice (fourth), potatoes (seventh), tropical fruits (sixth), jute (second), and farmed fish (fifth).
[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh#Economy
To get a perspective: look at the map of egypt and map of their population density. Half the country is pretty much in Nile Delta and most of the rest is along Nile.
Most people in those countries do not consume large amount of meat, massively reducing their need for large amount of agricultural land.
Soil fertility is just part of the equation, does not explain Egypt, Pakistan and a multitude of other countries.
You clearly haven’t been to Pakistan anytime recently
It is true that the state throws absolutely colossal amount of resources on geoengineering and agriculture, yet to little effect.
China is nowhere near Holland or other advanced agriculture player in calories production per unit of labour.
Out of close to a 100 officials I went by through my career, I only managed to befriend two. From those two, I barely know in the most generalised terms of what is happening in top tiers.
Agriculture meetings are alleged to be the non-stop shit show, an every day crisis, and a way to demotion for the prime majority of cadres put on the agri committees, as most of them fail at the task.
Provincial level party executives all send their deputies instead of themselves to them as they fear demotion and penalties if they say something silly at those meetings.
Chinese bureaucracy does not deserve much credit there. Were that much of money be given to just anybody moderately competent, China would've long beaten even Holland on that.
The Dutch have a stronger focus on produce export and a higher income per capita, so they have to be a lot more efficient in order to be competitive in the global economy.
Chinese love seafood and fish, they consume quite a bit of it as hinted by the article. But they usually also want to buy it alive.
Therefore in supermarkets and even restaurants you usually have tanks with live fish, crabs, etc. As fresh food as can be.
Regarding vegetables, the north is actually not that north by European standards and is sunny in winter (Beijing is at the same latitude as Ibiza...). This means that in places like Beijing they can have solar greenhouses that can produce fresh, local vegetables all year long even when it's freezing outside (winters are much colder than in Europe).
See for example: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/reinventing-the-gree...
I bet it's characteristic for large cities where the amount of produce consumed is large, and prices are higher.
If it's anything like Chinatown produce in the U.S., it will be quite cheap:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-fruits-and-veggies-are-so-c...
Even during the Maoist period 'new rice' was given out/sold once a year for celebration. Everyone was aware they were eating rotated granary rice.
Storing crops against famine (and eating the old, stored grain) is an ancient tradition [1] dating back to at least 6000 BC, and in China, guarding against famine was one of the earliest tasks of the Chinese proto-state.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granary
At most a third of India is vegetarian.
http://theconversation.com/the-myth-of-a-vegetarian-india-10...
https://www.quora.com/As-a-Chinese-person-what-do-you-think-...
Dead Comment
https://www.quora.com/profile/Janus-Dongye-Qimeng
Also.... who is asking the questions?